Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)
If there is a Division in the House the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
General Practitioners: Appointments
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of how quickly an economically active patient should be able to secure an appointment with their GP and how that compares with other professions.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, the Committee will recall the fabulous opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics held in London and its NHS component. Interestingly, some young indigenous Brits take for granted our fabulous health service, free at the point of delivery. They do not really appreciate how clever we have been as a nation, but hard-working immigrants from other countries certainly do. We have much to be proud of and I salute the efforts of all those involved. Our European partners have a variety of health systems that appear to work for them. However, you have only to look at the political challenges with the health system in the United States to see the problems that we have avoided and to understand that their healthcare costs are considerably higher than ours. There is no doubt that the NHS is very good if you are seriously ill, which is one reason why I am not the slightest bit interested in private healthcare. However, we would be deluding ourselves if we denied that we have some serious difficulties with the NHS; the most obvious are A&E and ambulance services, but I want to concentrate on GP services, although they are related.
I recently had to move house from one parish to an adjacent parish, but which was in a different GP catchment area. My original surgery was co-located with a rather good convenience store and the nearest ATM to my house. The surgery met all my requirements, I never had any difficulty in securing an appointment when I needed one, and the practice premises were purpose-built and relatively new. My new surgery’s building is old and small and there was local evidence that appointments could be a problem, probably due to increasing demand from a growing and also ageing population. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I did not want to register at that new, nearest surgery but I was told that I had to. I am sorry to say that my worst fears were realised. The administration of the surgery was relatively poor from the start. Clearly not all practices operate to the same standard—though I hope that my noble friend Lord Bridgeman will describe to the Committee how a good practice works.
Worse still, several weeks ago now, I developed some slightly worrying symptoms. However, my judgment was—correctly—that I was not an urgent case and I was not prepared to claim otherwise. Unfortunately I could not secure an appointment at all. Given that men are notoriously bad at presenting with unpleasant symptoms, how can it possibly be right to deny a patient an appointment with the doctor? The fact is that people who are fit, well and working ask to see the doctor only when absolutely necessary. All they need is a bit of maintenance from time to time to keep being productive and generating the money needed to fund the NHS.
Before suggesting to the Committee what is going on, I want to make it clear that I fully appreciate that GPs have to deal with a wide range of patients, many of whom have serious conditions or are even terminally ill. I feel that practices fall into the trap of believing that they are providing a service to a certain standard and that patients should be grateful for what they get. Surgeries do not regard themselves as being competitive, which means that there is no mechanism for them to individually determine the appropriate level of service, although no doubt they try hard. It also means that they cannot determine what services to offer or how to provide them.
Take the appointments issue. Suppose I rang my solicitor’s office and said that I had had a fairly worrying meeting with another businessman who claimed that I was infringing his patent. I do not think that the solicitor’s office would say, “Well, we have no appointments available for the next two weeks. Try again next Monday, but make sure you ring early because the available slots go quickly”. I suggest that any professional services outfit with that sort of ethos would not stay in business very long. I have to tell the Committee that that is exactly what I experienced with my new GP surgery and I doubt that this is unusual. This is why my Question compares GPs to other professions.
Or take blood tests. GPs no longer seem to take blood samples. A separate appointment has to be made, either with the practice nurse or with a local hospital. This is fine if one is retired, but if one is working it is another appointment to be made which conflicts with economic activity. It also tends to lower productivity, which we know is a general UK problem. I have not been to an A&E department for many years, but it seems to me that the majority of walk-in patients could equally well be dealt with by a GP surgery, and far more quickly than the four-hour target, which is itself an admission of total failure. At present, GP surgeries do not market themselves for that business because they do not need to.
Surely, a practice in a competitive environment would say, “Why wait at least four hours in an A&E department for a minor injury when, if you were registered with us, you could be on your way within an hour?”. I am not suggesting for a moment having mini-A&E centres. Serious injuries and life-threatening conditions are clearly a matter for a large A&E department with the appropriate range of facilities.
Since the time when I was forced to change my GP the rules have changed, I am pleased to say, and with certain, sensible caveats one can register with whichever surgery one wants. I am pleased about this but there is still no evidence of any commercial competitive pressures between GP surgeries. I hope the Minister can tell the Committee what, if anything, he is doing to introduce competition between GP surgeries. Does he see this as being important, so that economic output is not lost due to a GP service that does not suit busy working people, especially if they work a long way from home? Does he agree that GPs should be doing more to relieve the unnecessary load on A&E departments?
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for bringing this important subject to debate. I fear that it is now widely acknowledged that the situation in primary care is dire. However, I have to say that my own general practice seems to be an exception; perhaps because it is in leafy Hampstead, perhaps because it has enough partners and staff to withstand the buffeting of the rest of the NHS, and perhaps because it has such excellent leadership. Or, most likely, because it has all three. Elsewhere, in much of the country, general practice lacks all three and the picture is less than rosy. Many practices are small, with two or three partners, and if one goes off sick, retires early or goes abroad, the remaining one or two are stuck in an almost unsustainable situation.
One young GP I know is struggling with just such a burden. She is about to lose her partner, who is retiring early, and she is now running her practice with little or no support. She is finding it impossible to attract any staff to join her and cannot find another GP to come into her practice. There are just too few around who want to work in a less than affluent part of London, despite the Government’s blandishments. It is very hard for her to find other staff too. Meanwhile, she is running around, sitting on committees and the local CCG, as well as dealing with the mound of NHS-inspired paperwork and trying to look after her young family at the same time. Working from eight in the morning until eight at night is an impossible burden to place on anyone. I fear that that is the experience of far too many GPs and it is not much wonder that too many are leaving early and too few are willing to join.
It is absolutely vital that the Government rethink their efforts to encourage and support GPs. Whatever they are doing now is clearly not working properly. Of course, every area of the NHS is suffering from underfunding but primary care, once the beacon of the service, is now merely a flickering candle. If there is anywhere that the NHS needs to see reignited, it is primary care. Of course, a move to larger group practices, with added support, where that can be achieved, would help. But too many practices are too small at the moment. Some GPs gain comfort from being salaried rather than self-employed. That at least cuts down their administrative burden. If it can be made a more attractive option—something the Government might pursue—it offers advantages to some.
Finally, I will say just a few words about research in primary care. I express my interest as scientific adviser to the Association of Medical Research Charities, an organisation whose member charities well understand the valuable role that GPs can play in research. But at the moment too many GPs are so stretched and overworked that there is no way that they can even think about research in the face of everything else they are asked to do. If we are to achieve what Ministers, the Chancellor and even the Prime Minister have spoken about, which is to embed research in the NHS as a major function, and if we are to see what is mandated in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 on making research an inextricable part of the NHS, we are going to have to give GPs all the support necessary for them to be able to fulfil their part. We are still way off that and if, as I understand it, NHS England has not even signed off its research strategy for last year, never mind this year, what hope do we have that we will see any change here? Is there anything the Minister can do to persuade NHS England to do more to support research in primary care and, incidentally, stimulate it into publishing its long-awaited research strategy?
To return to the main thrust of my remarks, is there anything the Minister can do to persuade the Government to look at how we can get general practice out of the black hole it is heading for before it is too late?
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. There is of course much controversy at present concerning what I will call the Government’s preoccupation with the weekend working practices of junior hospital doctors but it seems to me that many people in need of medical support would have preferred the Government to keep concentrating on issues such as strengthening out-of-hours services for GPs and using modern technology to enable people more easily to interact with a GP.
Of course, much progress on these issues was being made prior to the general election and I am seeking some reassurance in this debate that that progress will continue. Just prior to the general election, it was announced that GPs in more than 1,400 practices across England would receive £550 million of government funding to reorganise their services so that surgeries could be open from 8 am to 8 pm, seven days a week. My good friend Norman Lamb, who was then the Care Minister, told me he hoped that some of this funding would lead to much greater use in those practices of patient consultations by videolink, email and telephone, together with a greater provision of online booking services. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us about progress since that announcement last March.
That funding, however, was directed at slightly fewer than one in five GP practices in England so I hope that we might also hear more today about how the remaining 80% of GP practices can be supported in improving access for their patients. This is both very important in terms of improving patient care and essential if we are to avoid the crisis in our hospitals getting even worse. I would like to hear from the Minister about how the £250 million infrastructure fund, which was first announced in the 2014 Autumn Statement, is helping to improve and provide more integrated health centres and more use of technology. The Government’s press release at the time claimed that they would help to fund additional services, including on-site pharmacists, speech therapists, minor surgery and diagnostic tests. It was also intended to make it easier for GPs to return to the profession following a career break, encourage more medical students to take careers as GPs, and enable GPs considering retirement to work reduced hours in the interim. This timely debate will allow the Minister to describe, I hope, progress on these issues over the past 12 months.
However, we need to go much further and be much bolder in using new technology to improve access to GPs. Ten years ago I visited India and looked at the provision of health services in remote rural areas, where access to a GP, let alone a hospital, was bound to be extremely difficult. I was very impressed by the use of webcams in specially equipped vehicles that could tour rural areas and with the help of a trained nurse allow some basic tests to be undertaken and a face-to-face conversation to be held with a GP or even a consultant. This made me think about how we could do much more in this country, using new technology, to let people talk to a GP without necessarily visiting the surgery. As technology develops, those GPs or other people, including carers and family members, can monitor certain conditions remotely.
My own Fitbit tells me how many steps I have walked each day, and what my heart rate and my sleeping pattern are. While I do not wish to share this information with anybody else, it is easy to do so. I acknowledge at this point that it was active intervention by my own GP’s practice that led me to undertake a more active exercise regime and improve my own diabetic control. In time, I expect that my blood pressure and glucose levels will be monitored remotely by health professionals.
For some elderly or housebound residents, this could be a good way for GPs to help keep an eye on them without clogging up their surgeries, while enabling the professionals to determine properly whether or not an appointment is really necessary. At the moment, getting an appointment when needed is often very difficult. Getting access to a doctor at night is usually extremely difficult, but this was not always so. Something has gone wrong when people feel the need to turn up at A&E if they can or call an ambulance when they should really have been seen by a GP at a surgery or in their home.
These problems are well illustrated in the recent report by the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons, which highlighted the following facts. There are simply not enough GPs to meet demand. Deprived areas are particularly short of GPs and nurses. Finally, there is much variation in patients’ experience of getting and making appointments, with people who work full-time among those who are most disadvantaged.
It is also clear from that report that information about basic facts, such as services provided at GPs’ surgeries and the availability of those services, is sometimes difficult to obtain. The report also makes it clear that the Department of Health and NHS England do not have the data that they need to make well-informed decisions about how to improve access to general practice or where to direct their limited resources. In the long run, these issues come down to improving the way in which we try to do things, endeavouring to make efficiency savings. But without a doubt, funding is the major issue.
The results of the most recent general elections show people’s reluctance to pay higher levels of taxation and politicians’ reluctance to ask them to do so. This is in spite of the fact that people now expect a pension from the state for a much greater proportion of their lives than ever before; with this comes the probability of them needing greater provision of health and social care. Improving access to GPs and funding the health and social care services that we need may require the introduction of a hypothecated tax in future. I believe that all parties should be considering this option if they are to be honest about addressing these problems. I would welcome the views of the Minister on that.
Viscount Bridgeman (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Attlee for initiating this debate. We heard from him that in his view the conduct of the practice of which he is now a patient leaves something to be desired. He has also been good enough to indicate that I might be able to sketch out for your Lordships a somewhat contrasting view. These two interventions, from my noble friend and myself, have not been co-ordinated; we only exchanged views two days ago.
I and my family are fortunate to be patients of a practice in central London which tells a different story. This practice has a walk-in surgery open for an hour and a quarter in the morning and two and a half hours in the evening Monday to Friday, with the exception of Wednesday evenings. I have never had to wait more than 20 minutes to see a GP. The practice has first-class support in practice nurses and receptionists. Repeat prescriptions can be requested online—this is now fairly common among GP practices. Significantly, and in many ways this is the acid test, the practice has some of the lowest referral rates to A&E in central London. In other words, more patients can be treated for minor ailments in the surgery without going to A&E. The cost of an A&E admission is approximately £80. Your GP is paid that same sum to have you for one year, so if you go to A&E for a runny nose that is the same money paid out again.
In 2006, under the GP settlement, practices could opt for PMS premium status where for extra work undertaken they received extra pay. On the whole the more enterprising practices—including the one where I am a patient—took advantage of this offer. Now I understand that the latest proposal from NHS England is for this premium to be substantially reduced or eliminated over a period of four years to bring the funding of PMS practices in line with the GMS practices that did not take advantage of the 2006 premium. It would be interesting to know if my noble friend Lord Attlee’s practice is one of the latter. It is policy to recycle the resultant savings thus made back to CCGs and through them to the practices within their groups. Where PMS practices are in a group with a substantial number of other PMS practices, the clawback available to CCGs will be considerable and as I understand it there will be significant funding available for improved services and financial support. However, PMS practices that stand virtually alone within their groups will not enjoy the same level of support. Note also that all funding deriving from the cutback to PMSs will be available to both PMS and GMS practices—a further subtle discrimination against the former.
Let me attempt to be constructive with three examples of welcome initiatives instituted by NHS England. The first is integrated care: a structuring for the patient to formulate with his GP a health plan. In my case, this involved an hour-plus session with the doctor—just think of that length of time being made available in an NHS practice. As I understand it, that model draws on experience in the US and elsewhere where patients with planned maintenance prove to be much less of a demand on healthcare services. This is being funded by CCGs, which are investing very considerably in it. It is a nation-wide initiative and much to be welcomed.
Another development in our part of London is the rapid response teams under the control of local health trusts but funded by CCGs. These consist of doctors, nurses and paramedics and I understand they are extremely effective in saving GPs in practice from having to leave their surgeries to answer emergency calls. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, suggested the damage caused by such calls in terms of the time of doctors in small practices.
Thirdly, I draw attention to the development of GP federations, where GPs join together in a unique and largely unprecedented way. These are set up as limited companies and their mission is to bid for services that hospitals may wish to contract out. Examples I know about are smoking cessation clinics, cardiograms, testing patients on warfarin for anti-coagulation and looking after airways disease—in short, widely disparate procedures. I think we can assume that in all cases there will be cost savings for NHS England and any profits made by the federations will be available to their GP shareholders.
I revert to the subject of my noble friend’s debate. My question for the Minister is how NHS England is to reconcile the very different standards that are emerging from this short debate. The challenge for NHS England is how to bring the less adventurous practices up to an acceptable standard without effectively dumbing down the forward-looking practices which, as I have tried to illustrate, have the potential to introduce new, co-operative practices with a substantial contribution to cost savings.
My own NHS practice reckons it will lose around £400,000, resulting in a cutback to the PMS premium over four years. From the resulting benefits that are to be made available by the CCGs to the practice, and I have given three examples, it is estimated that the practice will reduce the loss to about £200,000. Why should any loss be acceptable in this of all branches of healthcare? This is one branch of healthcare which is showing real initiative, particularly in regard to enterprise and its financial viability. Surely the NHS is in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. I shall very much welcome my noble friend the Minister’s comments on that. I am in danger of mixing my metaphors, but general practice is one of the jewels in the NHS, which has been made clear by all the speakers today. Let the entrepreneurial practices not only be an example to their less-motivated colleagues but also lead the way in taking advantage of the imaginative developments that NHS England has initiated—but free from the financial penalisation that many practices are now facing.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for allowing us to debate this very important question and congratulate him on the quality and range of his contribution, which was extremely interesting. I echo his initial comments about the value of the National Health Service. However, he also referred to the considerable challenges we face, not least the amount of money that is being made available. I note the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made and I will be most interested in the Minister’s response to his suggestion that we need to move to hypothecated taxation. Interestingly, we have a recommendation from the Liaison Committee—of which I am a member—which I hope will come to the House next week to establish a special Select Committee in the next Session looking at the long-term sustainability of the NHS. I think that that will be a very interesting discussion, not least because it is clear, as the noble Earl said, that alongside A&E and ambulance services, general practice is facing considerable pressure.
Like my noble friend Lord Turnberg I am very lucky to enjoy an exceptional GP practice, which is a small branch of a large inner-city practice. It is clear from the comments of noble Lords and from the regular GP patient survey that people’s experiences are very mixed. The noble Earl focused on economically active members of society, but his comments could have applied to all patients. Noble Lords are often fond of quoting the Commonwealth Fund’s international comparators, which do not always compare with the OECD research covering the same ground. I was interested in its latest report on public perception of primary care in the UK and the fact that there has been a dramatic drop in the positive view of how primary care works, with the percentage of those expressing satisfaction going down from nearly 50% in 2009 and 2012 to just over 20% in 2015. So there has no doubt been an appreciable change in attitude by the public in relation to GP services. The GP patient survey shows, for instance, that only 70.4% of patients find it easy to get through to someone at their GP surgery on the phone. This is down from previous figures. It also showed that 6.5% book their appointments online, up from 3.2% in December 2012. It is really disappointing that such a low number of people actually take advantage of online booking or, indeed, that such a low number of practices promote online booking. Obviously, it would make life so much easier if it were easier for people to do that, and it would deal with the problem that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, described, about the differentiation between an urgent appointment and one that is important but does not have to take place within 48 hours. Many GP practices seem quite unable to devise a system to cope with those circumstances.
It is also interesting that the GP patient survey showed that 23.1% see their preferred GP a lot of the time. We need to think through the implications of that, particularly with seven-day working, because I suggest that with the move into larger federations, which I support, the seven-day working concept inevitably means that people will have less opportunity to see their preferred GP—particularly, as we know, when many GPs do not want to work full time any more. That seems to me to depend on information, particularly electronic information, being available, so that a patient does not have continually to tell different GPs in a practice about their conditions, because they actually have systems where that is noted down.
I also note that in the survey 57.7% were happy with the amount of time that they had to wait for an appointment. Again, that is down—it is not a great figure. The overall satisfaction with GP opening hours, at 74.8%, is down and again not very satisfactory.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to the PAC report on access to general practice, which came out only a couple of weeks ago. I thought that it was a very interesting report and, no doubt, the Government will respond in due course. But it showed that we have problems with retention and recruitment, that good access to GP care is too dependent on where patients live, and there is an unacceptable variation in patients’ practices and in the appointments system. Tellingly, it said that the Department of Health and NHS England do not have enough information—that is a point that the noble Lord made—on demand, activity or capacity, which one would have thought might have been of interest to NHS England. I think that it is clear that both the department and NHS England has really failed to ensure that staffing in general practice has kept pace with growing demand. I think that they have been complacent about general practitioners’ ability and, indeed, willingness to cope with the increase in demand caused by rising public expectations and the needs of an ageing population.
No doubt the Minister will tell us about recent initiatives, which are welcome in themselves, but a lot of changes will come about because GPs themselves will make them happen. I am really impressed by the large federations that have been established. There is one very large one in west Birmingham and the Black Country, which has had some incredibly impressive results in relation to access. It is through having a large enough federation that you can meet the work patterns of individual GPs, and it is through the simple use of phone and email to have much more flexible appointments. I do not know whether the noble Lord has read a report from David Pannell, the chief executive of Suffolk GP Federation, which complains that the department is not really giving support to the development of provider networks and federations and that the only initiative promoting working at scale was the Prime Minister’s GP access fund, which was doing little to diverge from the traditional model of contracting with individual practices.
The point being made here is that every single contract which is part of the PM’s access fund has been a traditional primary medical services or general medical services one with an individual practice. Would the Minister be prepared to have a look at this and to talk to the National Association of Provider Organisations? Its chair has commented:
“Whereas NHS England supported the vanguards programme, there has been virtually no support for the leadership of federations which are not part of a vanguard”.
I have quoted from a story in the Heath Service Journal and I have also looked at comments which have been made on it. One comment, which was anonymous—I do not know why—said:
“Brighton and Hove CCG have been developing a really innovative and ambitious contract with GPs working at scale which the LMC have supported”.
It may well be worth looking at that to see whether more can be encouraged.
Finally, I wonder if the development of federations means that the Government need to look at CCG governance. If you have a large-scale federation covering an area roughly the same size as a CCG, I can see a potential conflict of interest. The federation could dominate the election of members to the CCG board. The contracts should be at that level, not held by NHS England, so I wonder if we need to go back to the issue of CCG governance and have a majority of lay people on CCG boards. That would enable the Government to be much more proactive in supporting these federations. I am convinced that they are the only way we can deal with the problems raised by the noble Earl.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, I also thank my noble friend for raising this issue. General practice has been a golden thread running through the NHS since 1948. It is worth reminding ourselves that although the situation may be dire in some parts of the country, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, mentioned, the NHS is still almost unquestionably the most efficient, highest-value healthcare system in the world. Not long ago, I was with some people from the Mayo Clinic who made that point—we are very self-critical. It is right that we should be but also right that we should remember that much of what we do in the NHS is absolutely world class and we do it with very little resource. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman and other noble Lords made the point that the NHS is, in their own individual experience, absolutely first class. If you read the newspapers every day you might think that everything is going to hell in a handbasket but most people’s individual experience of the NHS is extremely good. I have not seen the Commonwealth Fund report to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred but I would like to.
We should be extremely concerned if confidence in primary care is diminishing. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, about research. I could answer his question if it was directed at specialist research, but I am not sure how much money or resource is going into research into primary care. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised the issue of hypothecated tax. The argument for hypothecating tax for health is no stronger or weaker than doing so for education or overseas aid, or other areas. He will know, as well as I do, that the Treasury has wrestled with and discussed this issue for many years. Any decision will be made in the Treasury, not by me. I could argue both sides of the case with equal conviction and sincerity, so I cannot give the noble Lord the answer he might want to elicit from me.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord Bridgeman raised the issue of variation. We have got thousands of GP practices and there will inevitably be variation. The question is how we reduce that variation and shift the curve to the right in terms of getting a great general practice. I happen to believe that one way of doing that is through networks and federations. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to Vitality in Birmingham. Unquestionably, it will spread best practice within that group. The good CCGs are measuring the performance of GPs in their area much more intelligently than they used to. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman mentioned that his practice has very low referral rates. That is exactly the kind of information that should be measured on a GP-practice basis across all GP practices in CCG areas. For example, I have seen the metrics that the CCG in Camden looks at. You can see very clearly what the referral rates are from practices. The outliers can be seen and you can manage that down. They have had some very good results. If noble Lords would like to look at the atlas of variation, or at the Right Care model that NHS England is using to try to identify variation on a disease on a population basis to drive down that level of variation, I can well recommend that they do that.
I have come to the view—it is almost a statement of the bleeding obvious—that of all the tools that we have in our toolkit to try to secure improvement, be it in clinical outcomes, performance of trusts or in general practice, the best is identifying variation. The crucial thing about variation is that you have good-quality data. The first thing when you shine a light on clinical practice, for example, is that the clinicians will dispute the data—often rightly—so you have to demonstrate that the data are good. If you can prove the data, GPs, psychiatrists, acute physicians, surgeons and the like will take that as a challenge, because they tend to be competitive individuals. They like their own practice to be better than anybody else’s. Variation based on good-quality data is essential.
I will take away the comments made by my noble friend Lord Bridgeman on PMS. NHS England is committed over the five years to increasing spend on primary care by some 25% in real terms, whereas in the rest of the NHS it will be more like 15%. There will be more resource relative to other parts of the NHS going into primary care. They will want to be sure that they are getting real value out of any premium payments made under the PMS contract, but I will take that away if I can and write to my noble friend on that matter.
Governance is an extremely important issue. I had not thought about it in terms of where a network of general practice is almost the same size as the underlying CCG, which raises another issue about governance. We thought about it in terms of conflict of interest and the award of contracts, but that is a very serious point. NHS England is looking at these governance issues. I will bring this aspect to its attention.
I turn to what I had pre-prepared. My noble friend Lord Attlee is quite right that people should receive the right care from the right professional at a time convenient for them. However, we know that there is variation in people’s ability to access a GP and that those in full-time employment report lower levels of satisfaction with surgery opening hours than other groups. This is one of the reasons why, by 2020, everyone will be able to access routine GP appointments at evenings and weekends as part of our commitment to a seven-day NHS. That does not mean that every practice will be open seven days a week. We hope that by 2020 most general practices will be part of a network or federation and they will be able to offer that kind of service across the federation.
As I am sure my noble friend will understand, it is not possible to make a direct comparison between accessing GPs and other professionals such as solicitors, but he is, of course, right that people should be able to access a GP appointment when they need it. This is why the Government have already invested £175 million in the Prime Minister’s access fund to test improved and innovative access to GP services. I know that it is very spotty across the country still, but there is a growing understanding that the traditional model of GP practice—lots of small practices with two or three partners, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg —is not a viable model of delivering primary care for the future.
The traditional model is going to change. We will have networks and much bigger practices with 10 to 20 salaried partners supported by a much larger team of skilled people—pharmacists, physios, OTs, physician associates, prescribing nurses and the like. As well as providing extended hours, schemes are also looking at other ways of improving access for patients, including better use of telecare and health apps. This is an issue that noble Lords raised in the debate today. Not only will we see much more use of the telephone but, for example, the Hurley Group has an e-consultant system, and more people will use other ways of accessing primary care rather than being seen by the GP. This has a lot of legs, if you like. Apps such as Babylon, with which noble Lords will be familiar, and many other apps will make a face-to-face consultation with a GP less critical than it has been in the past.
My noble friend also asked about competition between surgeries. Here, I will point to what we are doing to increase choice for patients. In particular, my noble friend raised a concern about having to move from one practice to another when he moved house. I was pleased to hear that he is now aware of the steps that have been taken to make it easier for patients to exercise choice over which practice they are registered with. The GP contract for 2014-15 brought in a measure allowing GP practices to register new patients from outside their traditional boundaries, but without a duty to provide home visits for such patients, which seems reasonable in the circumstances. This measure is designed to increase flexibility in the system and the freedom that patients have to choose a GP practice that suits them. For example, commuters may wish to register with a practice close to their work as opposed to where they live or a patient who moves house may wish for continuity.
I return to the technology point about booking systems raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Take-up may be low at the moment—I think that 6.5% of bookings are done online—but I have no doubt that it will grow. If you look at the number of people now ordering basic food from supermarkets online, that is the direction of travel and it will speed up as time goes by.
The noble Lord raised the issue of reducing pressure on A&Es. In January, there was an increase of 10% in A&E attendances on the previous year. This is putting huge pressure on hospitals because if the front end of the hospital is being flooded, it makes it increasingly difficult for it to meet its waiting times on elective surgery, for example. Delivering more care to people outside hospital will not only lower the cost but provide better care because going into A&E with a fairly minor problem is not a great way of delivering care.
The noble Earl raised an issue about blood tests. Examples of improved access to diagnostic tests can be seen in both the vanguard sites which NHS England is developing. They are part of the new models of care programme and access fund schemes. For example, a vanguard in Birmingham offers consultant-led outpatient clinics and diagnostic facilities, such as X-rays. We often talk about integrating social care with healthcare, but integrating healthcare is also not a bad way to go. We have talked in the past about collocating GPs in A&Es or just outside them, but there are also many specialist outpatient clinics that can be delivered in primary care settings, so long as the facilities are there. We hope that the £1 billion infrastructure fund that we have announced will deliver better facilities closer to where people live.
We have a lot to be proud of but we are inclined to dwell on areas where we are failing and forget sometimes where we are achieving great success. The workforce is a serious issue. We are committed to finding 10,000 new GPs or GP equivalents in general practice by 2020 and we have increased the number of training places by 3,500 from this year and going forwards. To be honest, there is a risk around whether we will be able to get that number of people into general practice. However, without that kind of workforce commitment it will be difficult to deliver our ambitions.
So, it is a combination of technology, workforce and infrastructure. The five-year forward view is behind the thrust of the comments made by noble Lords and, if I am still here in 2021, I hope that I will be able to say that we have spread the best practice that exists in large parts of the country on a much wider basis. However, I am afraid that we will not have eliminated all variation.
Children: Maternal Care
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Dundee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to promote ongoing maternal care for children.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, I look forward to the comments and guidance of colleagues speaking today and thank them very much for their interest in this debate. In my remarks I would like to touch on three aspects: first, the obvious connection between an early solid quality of childcare and a later stability of adulthood; secondly, a distinction between the effect of childcare within the home on the one hand and that in day centres on the other; following from this and, thirdly, the case for giving better financial incentives to mothers to stay at home with their children if that is what they might prefer to do in the first place.
On how it may have induced quality or otherwise, childcare policy should of course be judged on several fronts, not least, when the child is a bit older, through early education itself and the extent to which that may have reached all income groups. Here the Government deserve credit for their commitment to a package of schemes. This includes 15 hours of free early education for all three year-olds and for around 40% of the most disadvantaged two year-olds, administered by local authorities; and 30 hours of free childcare a week, worth around £5,000 a year per child, to working parents of three and four-year olds. In a written government paper, replying to the Affordable Childcare report’s recommendations, my noble friend the Minister announced these and other measures; that government response also followed our debate last year on that report, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland.
All political parties agree the priority of giving the child from the start the best possible deal of security, confidence and education. Each political party seeks to raise such standards, acknowledging the connection between an early quality of childcare and a later stability of adulthood, while also recognising the enormous contribution that success in this way can make to reducing the problems of society, such as the current huge increase in mental health ailments.
The next point is the distinction between the effect of childcare within the home and that outside it in day centres. All of us are grateful for the availability and national distribution of day centres. Many of these are very good, as well as essential to working mothers. Daycare can also assist academic performance from low-income homes and, along with parent-infant therapy, even improve children’s emotional well-being. Yet it is misleading to assert that babies or toddlers need stimulation, education or friends. The truth is that at that age they develop best as a result of close supervision by and affection from a familiar responsive adult in the home. Every study reveals that the child’s emotional security develops in a far more assured way through maternal bonding than it can ever hope to do in day centres, however good these may be.
This leads to the choices of mothers themselves. Recent opinion polls show that 80% of them believe that one parent should be able to stay at home, while 88% of mothers with very young children have said that the main reason for returning to work is financial pressure. My noble friend the Minister may concur that if mothers and families express such views, they should be offered wider choices than those at present. The objective would not be to discourage mothers who want to work from so doing. Instead, the aim would be to enable those mothers who prefer to stay at home to do that rather than working simply because they consider that the family cannot otherwise afford for them not to do so.
Of course, there is also the distinction between maternal and family home care of children who are under three years old and that for older children. Does my noble friend the Minister therefore consider that if in better corresponding to family wishes much wider choices should be offered in general, the Government should also analyse much more sharply in particular how these preferences may differ in regard to home care for children under three years old and that for older children?
Most countries operate either a joint taxation system or an individual tax system which allows families the option of being taxed jointly, either by transferable allowances or credits. Will my noble friend the Minister agree to review the merits of certain expedients, including: a system of transferable personal allowances where a non-earning spouse would be able to transfer the whole or part of the basic income tax personal allowance to their earning spouse; income-splitting, under which for tax purposes families would be able to split family income in two and allocate half to each partner, as well as keeping both personal tax allowances; and child allowances, already practised by some countries, which allow an extra tax allowance per child? In fact, a recent OECD assessment notes that, apart from Mexico, the UK is the only developed country with a population of more than 10 million to apply tax based on individual income with no allowances for spouses or transferable allowances.
Perhaps inevitably, there are trade-offs inherent in any government policy that seeks on the one hand to promote child development and on the other to facilitate parental employment. For example, cheap low-quality childcare might help parents to work but would not meet the Government’s child development objectives. Yet, through adoption of some of these financial and fiscal adjustments as proposed, that anomaly reflected by trade-offs could be quite considerably redressed. Such steps would assist ongoing maternal care for children. As a result, to a greater extent children would become more secure, society more stable and, through choice rather than necessity, family employment much fairer.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for securing this debate today and for introducing it in such eloquent fashion. Early years, the early start in life and maternal support were a key priority for the coalition Government. It is good to have the opportunity to return to this issue. We do so in the week that a new all-party group has been set up. I am not really a fan of new all-party groups because there are thousands of them already, but this is the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age Two—The First 1,001 Days. That shows the consensus which now exists around the importance of the first 1,000 days of a child’s existence. Throughout the mother’s pregnancy and up until the age of two, approximately, is the key formative stage in any person’s life, physically, mentally and socially. I am glad that we now have that consensus about the importance of interventions during that time to make sure children grow up happy, healthy and well adjusted.
Needless to say, midwives have a key role in assisting mothers. This House, under the repeated instruction of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has over the years come to understand the continuing importance of midwives, not just in the support and information that they give to women during pregnancy but also in their ability to prioritise post-natal care plans with women so that they, once they come out of hospital, have in place a way to see them through what is sometimes the most demanding not to say frightening time in a parent’s life.
It is recognised by all parties that continuity in midwifery is extremely important. Quite often, one hears women talking not about the fact that they could not see a midwife but that they had to see different midwives. On each occasion they had to start from scratch and go through all sorts of details, so that by the time they got to the end of a short consultation they had had very little time in which to have a proper discussion about the issues bothering them. In the light of the recent report by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, what impact does the Minister believe that the introduction of personal budgets, as she proposed, would have on the availability of midwives? What is his assessment of the impact that it might have on the training—and access to that training—of midwifery students, who are so important for the future?
On 1 October 2015, services for children aged under five were transferred from the NHS to local authorities, which are now required to make provision for maintaining the universal health visitor reviews as part of the healthy child programme—specifically, the antenatal promotion review; new baby review; six to eight week assessment; one year assessment; and two to two and a half year review. We know, because there is a lot of evidence now both from this country and abroad, that early intervention with disadvantaged families can have a profound effect on the life chances of a child. We know that the public health interventions that are needed have to be integrated at a local level with the NHS to ensure that the healthy child programme and family nurse partnerships can identify and work with those families who are most in need. We know that investment in health visitor programmes pays off in terms of the benefits that they bring to families and the way in which they enable children to thrive and not to need far more expensive interventions later on. The transfer of powers to local authorities is well founded in evidence. How will the programme’s implementation be monitored and evaluated in practice and when can we expect to see the initial results? When will we be able to see figures, particularly in relation to the eradication of child poverty, which is a target by which this and all previous Governments are judged?
I touch briefly on mothers, work and childcare, which the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, alluded to. According to the Department for Education survey of parents in 2014-15, two-thirds of mothers—about 66%—were in employment and one-third of mothers were not working. About half of those non-working mothers agreed that they would prefer to go out to work if they could arrange good-quality childcare that was convenient, reliable and affordable. Among the mothers who had returned to work in the previous two years, the most commonly reported factor that had influenced their return to work was finding a job that enabled them to combine work and childcare. The availability of not just childcare but of suitable childcare is the single biggest problem for working parents. It is quite often the case that it is impossible to find childcare for half a day. Yet, when children start at nursery schools, sometimes they go for only half a day, which leaves parents desperately trying to juggle work around the time they have to get back to pick up the kids. Equally, some parents have to work part time but can only arrange with their employers to work for, say, two full days. If they cannot find childcare to fit around that, their chances of moving back into work—as the majority wish to do—are severely hampered.
We in the Liberal Democrats supported the extension of free childcare, particularly to parents who were not in work: free childcare is a very early-stage intervention and makes a big difference to children in deprived communities. We also recognise the importance of the role of fathers and believe that shared parental leave should be the aim of all Governments, so that individual families can arrive at solutions that work best for them and their children. Will the present Government continue the work of the coalition in trying to work with employers to improve the availability of affordable high-quality childcare, so that those parents who wish to can continue to work while giving their children the best start in life, which is what the vast majority of parents in this country want?
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I think I can say that I agree with every word that she said. I was particularly pleased that she referred to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and the importance of the continuity of care from midwives, specifically from practices where midwives are there at the beginning of pregnancy, deliver the child and keep in contact for a short time after pregnancy. That is definitely the ideal situation. I am also grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate. Many of these issues have been raised with the Minister in the course of the Childcare Bill. A particular concern is that many babies in childcare are often placed with the least qualified and experienced staff. I hope the Minister will perhaps have a chance to look at that.
I would like to address three issues: family learning as a means of promoting ongoing maternal care for children; the particular importance of continual maternal care from conception to the age of two; and the impact of homelessness on maternal care. I hope to concentrate most of my remarks on the area of the Minister’s immediate responsibility, which is schools. I begin by welcoming the new investment in schools by the Chancellor. I am delighted that he has chosen to introduce the sugar tax and will invest the benefit of that in education. The Government have also committed to expand still further the number of academy schools. I hope I may encourage noble Lords of all parties or none to use any business contacts they may have to promote application for high-quality sponsorship. Whatever one may think of academies it is becoming clear that it is vital for our children that there are sufficient excellent sponsors.
On family learning, I suggest that continuing good maternal care throughout a child’s development is becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, fathers are becoming increasingly absent. By the 2030s about 30% of our children will be growing up without a father in the home. On the other hand, housing continues to be in short supply and children are being obliged to remain at school: they cannot move out. It is becoming increasingly important that mothers stick with their children through the difficult adolescent years. Family learning can strengthen maternal relationships through the early school years and so help mothers tolerate their teenagers later.
Family learning can also hit another number of important goals. It improves children’s educational attainment. It engages fathers more effectively in their families. It can help migrant families to settle well, and may help combat childhood and adult obesity. I developed an understanding of family learning by meeting foster carers who had benefited from the prepared reading developed by Dr Andrea Warman at the British Association for Adoption & Fostering. Many of the foster carers themselves had difficulties at school and were taught to draw on those difficulties in efforts to understand the challenges that some of their foster children experienced. The training package gave the foster carers the confidence to read regularly with their children, and the results were significantly improved literacy results for their foster children and a reduction in placement breakdowns—foster parents and foster children sticking with each other. John Coughlan initiated paired reading at the local authority at which he is director of children’s services in Hampshire. Early indications suggested that paired reading also reduced the breakdown in placements in children’s homes.
I then had the opportunity to meet mothers at one of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education events to celebrate family learning. One mother had had a heroin addiction but was now able to work, thanks to the confidence that she had gained through family learning. Another mother had gone to get driving lessons following her success; another still described her joy at taking her son on a field trip to explore the natural history of a field and pond.
More recently, I spoke with the mother of a child who graduated from the Pimlico Academy, which the Minister established. The mother is the catering manager in a local secondary school and has a second, part-time job in a launderette. She is an immigrant of African origin; she said that in her country mothers will sell their jewellery to secure a good education for their child. Every school day, she and her son and daughter read together for 20 minutes, looking up any difficult words. She spoke of her pride in her daughter’s academic success. Now reading physics at a prestigious university, she gained 12 GCSEs, A*s or As, and four A-levels. Family learning arguably strengthens maternal bonds with children and certainly leads to significant increased attainment. If the Minister wishes to extend academic success to areas of generational deprivation, such as County Durham, he could do worse than to consult the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Workers’ Educational Association. The WEA has spoken to me about how it would position its teachers near the primary school gates to engage parents as their children begin their education.
No doubt, the Minister is also concerned about childhood obesity. Only this morning I heard about a project led by North Eastern Electricity which provides parents with cooking classes so that they can avoid wasting money on takeaways and feed their children more healthily. We heard on the “Today” programme that many schools require their pupils to run a mile a day. Schools find that their pupils lose weight, sleep better and have more concentration in lessons. So it may be possible to offer opportunities to parents to learn about exercise and so encourage their children to walk, and to run with their children. In all the above, I remember my own family experience and the importance for me of learning with my mother and father things such as cookery, reading and other study.
I commend to the Minister NIACE’s report on family learning, chaired by my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. With the expansion of academies, free schools and early years care, and the additional funds, I hope that he may wish to weave family learning much more strongly into what he offers.
On the importance of the continuity of maternal care between conception to the age of two, which the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, emphasised strongly in what he said, I hope that I can pay tribute to the many parliamentary colleagues who have raised the importance of early years to successive Governments. I think particularly of the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith MP, Graham Allen MP, Andrea Leadsom MP and the vice-chair and officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age Two—The First 1001 Days, to which the noble Baroness referred. Then there are Tim Loughton MP, Frank Field MP and others. Following on last year’s report for the parliamentary group, Building Great Britons, we recently heard from health professionals from Croydon how their trust was enacting the report’s inquiry in building a seamless partnership between midwives and health visitors, so extending even further the continuity of care to which the noble Baroness referred. I commend the report to your Lordships and am very grateful for the efforts of midwives, visitors and other health professionals to provide excellent perinatal care to mothers.
As a society, we need to give every attention to perinatal maternal care, if mothers are successfully to make a strong, continued attachment to their infant, which is vital to their child’s future health, education, economic independence and own family. I applaud again the Government’s investment, and that of the previous coalition Government, in health visiting, and indeed the resurrection of that service.
In my final area, I would like to explore the importance of homelessness on maternal care. Here again the perinatal period is a particular concern, and I much appreciate the work that the London Scholars at the University of East London have undertaken in the last six months of the effects of homelessness on perinatal maternal care. I await those conclusions. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for undertaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, that the Government would review policy on those pregnant women in detention, awaiting immigration removal, on Report of the Immigration Bill. Regrettably, in recent years the number of homeless children has increased to 100,000 in England alone. The Government’s legislation on housing and planning and their investment are a golden opportunity to make more secure affordable housing available to families with low incomes. I declare my interest as a landowner and residential landlord.
Again, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate and look forward to the Minister’s reply.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I am also grateful to the noble Earl for securing this debate because I am utterly convinced about the importance of ongoing maternal care for children. I speak as the father of two adopted children. I have learned through experience and study how crucial is the relationship that children have with their mother. It is an essential and defining part of the process of perinatal life that a bond is formed between child and mother, regardless of the latter’s conscious attitude towards her baby.
Research shows that healthy development depends on the quality of attachment from primary carers during the first three years of life when the brain’s structural plasticity is most available to being shaped by interactions with parents. In systemic terms, there is a benign, recursive, interactional loop operating between parent and child such that the baby’s brain responds to parental input—love, care, et cetera—by developing and growing physically and psychologically. This in turn triggers the parent or carer to provide more love and care.
As the noble Earl has said, the Government deserve much credit for their determination to improve the lot of children. I do, however, believe that other measures would help significantly. With this is mind, I applaud the Motion which the noble Earl and others introduced to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in September 2015, advocating, among other things, financial assistance for maternal care in the home for a minimum of three years, ensuring that such a care subsidy is independent of paid work. The organisation CARE, summarising its latest annual review of taxation in this country, said:
“According to our most recent research, a single-earner married couple with two children on the average OECD wage are liable to 35% more tax than the OECD average”.
Of course mothers should be able to go back to work when they wish but CARE boss Nola Leach said, when the report was published:
“Stay-at-home parents are making an important investment in their children and yet at present they end up being discriminated against by our current tax system”.
I should add that I have nothing against single parents or working parents: I am one. However, I would like the tax break for couples, which was announced in April 2014, to be extended, along the lines that the noble Earl suggested, to a 100% transferable allowance, which would carry far more significance and would mean that couples could benefit to the tune of £2,000 a year. The campaigning group Mothers at Home Matter argues that it matters for families to have choices in care, so that all are able to choose what works for them in their unique circumstances. That will surely be for the good of all.
Mothers are also presently concerned about conditionality placed on households on the new universal credit. Will family responsibilities at home be properly factored in? How much pressure will there be on second earners to return to work? Preliminary research seems to indicate that more mothers will be “encouraged” to sign up for interviews when children are 12 months old, even when they have significant care responsibilities at home.
As has been intimated, our concern should not just be about the early years: it is important for someone to be there for children in the middle and teenage years as family circumstances and pressures change. The availability of decent, part-time, paid work, particularly during secondary school, is key to achieving balance for some parents with care responsibilities. We need, in sum, a greater recognition of the loving one-to-one care that babies need and of children’s need for family time at all ages. We need to do all we can to facilitate it.
At the same time, while ongoing maternal care is important, so is parenting in general. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed to the importance of family and family learning. Churches are also doing much to provide training on parenting, for which there is an appalling lacuna in our society. The Mothers’ Union runs and trains facilitators for its “passionate about parenting” course. A participant said:
“This parents’ group helped me in so many ways. We talked in small groups and helped each other, my children found my parenting handbook (a resource I was given that I could take away and read through at home) so I thought I had been busted. But it was great, after a few weeks my 18-year-old gave me a hug. The first in years and he wasn’t the teenager I was having problems with!”.
Similarly, Care for the Family runs many positive parenting programmes, and Alpha provides parenting children and parenting teenagers courses.
As the father of adopted children, I know that the separation of children from their mothers is immensely traumatic. It is referred to by adoption specialist Nancy Verrier as “the primal wound”. It takes a great deal of love on the part of adoptive parents to begin to heal this wound. That shows the importance of the maternal bond and maternal care. It can be done, as was done by my wife. Tragically, she died when my children were aged nine and 15. That brought home to me, by tragic means, the importance of ongoing maternal care.
It is, of course, not true to say that healthy adults cannot develop if they have experienced a lack of maternal care. There are alternatives to it; attachment from other loving and caring adults, most especially fathers, can be very nurturing and healing. These are important alternatives, but no substitute for ongoing maternal care.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, for initiating the debate. Perhaps he and I are the only two people in the Room who know that our titles are very closely associated—although maybe not in their level. Invergowrie is a village on the outskirts of Dundee, where I spent all but the first 18 months of my life. I have an affinity in that sense, if not with the noble Earl.
I should also say that my mother was a teacher. At that time, when female teachers got married they had to give up the job. That seems incredible these days. I am sure that that has brought a sharp intake of breath from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, but that is what happened. In that sense, what the noble Earl seeks happened in some way for some women because they were forced to give up what they had trained to do. They could take other employment, of course, but they could not follow their chosen vocation. I am obviously not advocating that and it is long in the past, but I certainly appreciate the noble Earl’s motivation in the debate. He introduced it in a manner that underlines his clear commitment to ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life. I hope he will forgive me if I say I will not comment on his fiscal proposals. As far as I am concerned there is quite enough in the education portfolio, so I will leave that to others.
As the parent of a child currently in reception, I can say from experience that I appreciate the benefit of the integrated approach to early learning and care promoted by the early years foundation stage framework. It provides a clear set of common principles and commitments for professionals to deliver quality early education and childcare experiences to all children. Some changes were made to the framework in 2014, which have strengthened standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to the age of five, producing a uniformity that, in theory at least, offers all children the same opportunities. But, of course, I think we know that life is not like that.
There is no equality of opportunity for newborn babies. That is much to be regretted, because the first two years are crucial in shaping a child’s life chances. When a child is just 22 months old it can already be accurately predicted what her or his educational attainment will be at 22 years of age. The noble Earl said that studies reveal that a child’s emotional security develops in a more assured way through maternal bonding than in day centres or nurseries. I certainly agree that maternal—and, let us not underestimate it, paternal—bonding is essential from the minute the child draws its first breath. However, the extent to which bonding alone can sustain the crucial early development of a child depends to a great extent on the home environment to which the baby is introduced. That is where I part company with the noble Earl, because I am convinced that it is both unrealistic and, in most cases, unfair to expect the mother alone to keep the child at home and provide it with all the support that it needs in its first two years.
We have already heard the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, say that two-thirds of women either want or need to seek employment, but the reason I believe a mother needs support is that it may be her first child, in which case she is on a really steep learning curve, or if it is a subsequent child then, for obvious reasons, the time available to have sole responsibility for that child is limited, so she should seek support from a variety of sources. Not least among those is interaction with her contemporaries as mothers, in formal or informal group settings.
In 2010-11 report after report emphasised the enormous importance of early intervention, including the Tickell review of the early years and two reports by Graham Allen MP. At that time it seemed that a cross-party consensus was emerging to prioritise early intervention, but it seems that that soon evaporated, because the coalition Government began to cut early intervention budgets and poorer families have been suffering ever since. Hardest hit, in that sense, has been the network of Sure Start centres. When Sure Start was established by the Labour Government in 1998 the aim was to provide an accessible children’s centre in every community. Each centre would offer a wide range of high-quality services for families with children under the age of five. Sure Start was immediately popular and a network of some 3,500 centres was quickly established.
What was also established was that Sure Start works. There is comprehensive, independent evidence that it delivers quantifiable outcomes and that it is immensely popular with families. However, since 2010 funding has been cut by some 35% and over one-fifth of all children’s centres have now closed, meaning that Sure Start is approaching a point of no return. Last year the Government promised a consultation on the future of Sure Start. We still await this and I very much hope that the Minister can tell noble Lords today when it is likely to begin.
Sure Start was founded on the basis of extensive academic research. There is a plethora of evidence that demonstrates beyond doubt that Sure Start works. The national evaluation of Sure Start has been analysing the long-term development of 5,000 families who used Sure Start when their children were young. The evaluation has found clear evidence that children attending Sure Start centres are less likely to be overweight and more likely to be immunised; they have better social development and are less likely to offend in later life. Parents attending Sure Start centres provide more stable home environments and are more likely to move into work. It is a win-win situation for parents and children, yet the network is having to be dismantled.
Children’s centres have been found to be immensely popular with parents and evidence shows that they have been successful in reaching the parents who are likely to be the most disadvantaged. Also, the beneficial effects for parents persist at least two years after their last contact with Sure Start; often, social interventions do not have such a sustained impact. These findings have been reinforced by the children’s centre census produced annually by the charity 4Children. Its 2015 census found that, from 600 responses, 90% of parents reported that their children’s centre had a positive impact on their child and 83% reported that it had a positive impact on themselves. Tellingly, 80% reported that life would be harder for their family without their children’s centre.
It has been suggested by Government, or perhaps by some of those speaking on their behalf, that Sure Start is dominated by the sharp-elbowed middle classes. Evidence completely contradicts this. Independent Oxford University research in 2015 found that disadvantaged families use children’s centres for an average five months longer than more affluent families. This is because,
“the open-access, walk-in activities encouraged vulnerable families to take part because they did not feel there was a stigma attached to using the Centres”.
The Government have attempted to conceal some of the cuts that Sure Start has suffered. In 2011 the ring-fence established by the Labour Government was ended. In 2013 Sure Start funding was merged into local authorities’ general funding, and we all know what has since happened to that, most recently in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and, indeed, in yesterday’s Budget. Last year the charity Barnardo’s called on the Government to act to stop the life being squeezed out of children’s centres as many local authorities face impossible stresses and strains on their budgets.
No doubt the Minister will note that the amount of free childcare for three and four year-olds is to be extended, which is an important step, even if it will perhaps not be quite as extensive as we were first led to believe. He will also refer to the fact that more children aged five are making good progress against the early years foundation stage profile, and that is, of course, to be welcomed. More children are reaching the expected level of development in maths and literacy as well as in the key areas of social and emotional development, physical development and language. That is all to be welcomed, but these are measurements of children at the age of five. The progress made by many of them could be much better and much more likely to be sustained if more of them had an early opportunity to benefit from the support provided in so many forms by children’s centres, whose value is widely appreciated. It is to be regretted that the Government do not appear to share that appreciation.
It surely goes without saying that maternal care is of prime importance to any child, but it must be enhanced by external influences: everything from health visitors to educational psychologists and the benefits of interacting with their contemporaries in a secure, welcoming setting. Children’s centres have a vital role to play in that, and I invite the Minister to acknowledge that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dundee for calling a debate on this important subject and congratulate him on an excellent speech. I also thank other noble Lords who have contributed. My noble friend had a number of suggestions about how the overall system could be improved. Our provisions for flexible working and for parental and shared parental leave are now substantial. We have one of the longest periods of paid maternity leave in the EU and our rate of maternity pay exceeds the requirements of the EU directive. I am tempted to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the point my noble friend made about financial incentives, but it is rather beyond my pay grade. On the tax incentive to which he and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester referred, I will write to him and refer the matter to Her Majesty’s Treasury.
I think we all agree on the importance of maternal care and attachment in early childhood and its implications for longer term social and emotional development. International and UK studies have shown that the foundations for virtually every aspect of human development—physical, intellectual and emotional—are laid in early childhood. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the importance of this. What happens to a child from the womb to the age of five has lifelong effects on many aspects of health and well-being from obesity, heart disease and mental health to educational achievement and economic status.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to the importance of health visitors, and I am pleased to report that there are now 4,000 health visitors, which is nearly double the number there were in May 2010. This expansion supports effective, sustainable services that help families to give all children the best start and promote local communities’ health and well-being.
The evidence-based healthy child programme is the key universal public health service for improving the health and well-being of children. It aims to prevent problems in child health and development and to contribute to a reduction in health inequalities. The healthy child programme is the overarching service for the provision of interventions to strengthen parent-child relationships. Health visitors’ support can identify families who will benefit from extra help, including support for parents and children early in life. This can include referring families to specialist services, arranging access to support groups and practical support. I should mention here our extremely successful troubled families programme.
The noble Baroness asked about the introduction of personal budgets and the impact on midwives and on access to training for student midwives. The Department of Health and NHS England are considering all the recommendations of the maternity review and more detail on implementation will follow shortly. She also asked how the healthy child programme will be implemented and monitored post its transfer to local authorities and when we will get the initial results and figures, especially in relation to child poverty. The Department of Health has commissioned Public Health England to review mandation arrangements for the healthy child programme. Post transfer to local authorities, Public Health England is expected to report its findings later this year. The life chances strategy is expected to be published in July and will set out the Government’s plans for improving the life chances of all children. The strategy will introduce new indicators for measuring children’s life chances. The noble Baroness referred to childcare and I am delighted to report, as I have in the House, that 96% of three and four year-olds are accessing it and, of course, we have had a massive increase in childcare places over the past six years, an increase of nearly 250,000 places. I assure the noble Baroness that we will continue to push for more quality, available and flexible childcare.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made a number of points in relation to this Government’s policies ranging from sugar tax to academies. I am extremely grateful for his support, and I share his great concern about absent fathers, a problem I see constantly in our schools. He also referred to obesity, and I was pleased that the Chancellor yesterday doubled the pupil sports premium for primary schools and created an extra fund for all schools to extend their day for activities, particularly sport.
There are also opportunities through schools for parents to learn more themselves and to work with their children. Good schools have been particularly good at involving parents in school life and bringing them in for assessment, and an effective use of IT can be helpful in this regard. The noble Earl referred to family learning, which is obviously integral to strengthening paternal relationships and widening horizons. I am delighted that following the spending review, the Government are protecting funding for the core adult skills participation budgets—in cash terms, £1.5 billion. This will support families that are socially disadvantaged and will build confidence and resilience.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for his comments on family and child homelessness, and I share his concern in this regard. The Government believe that the most important thing for a family who have become homeless is to resolve their housing crisis and get them into settled accommodation as soon as possible. To do this, the Government have invested more than half a billion pounds in the past five years, enabling local authorities to help nearly a million households in becoming homeless. I also remind the noble Earl that the number of children in temporary accommodation is just over 100,000, which I agree is far too many, but it remains well below the peak achieved in 2006, when it was more than 130,000.
The Autumn Statement announced real-terms protection for central funding for homelessness, demonstrating our commitment to this area. Further support was available in the Budget, which included £100 million to deliver low-cost, second-stage accommodation for rough sleepers, £10 million over two years to support and scale up innovative ways to prevent and reduce rough sleeping, doubling the funding for the rough sleeping social impact bond announced in the Autumn Statement from £5 million to £10 million, and other action to decrease the number of rough sleepers. I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. He referred to the work of the church in improving parenting skills and, of course, I pay tribute to the church’s work in the whole area of schools.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred in detail to children’s centres. The Government are considering their policy in this area as part of the development of the cross-government life chances strategy and plan to publish details in the summer. At that point we will make clear how stakeholders and members of the public can contribute. We want a strong network of children’s centres, and we believe the debate should be about the effectiveness of those services. Quite a few centres have merged, and some have closed. The debate should be about the effectiveness of the services, not purely about counting buildings.
We have also substantially increased the money available for childcare. The 4Children’s survey of children’s centres suggested that more than a million families frequently accessed children’s centres in 2015. This estimate is unchanged since these statistics were first published in 2013. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, the latest Early Years Foundation Stage profile data reveal that an increasing proportion of children are achieving a good level of achievement at the age of five, 66% in 2015 compared with 52% in 2013, which is a substantial and impressive increase. I thank all noble Lords for contributing to today’s very stimulating debate.
Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital: Redevelopment
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for the redevelopment of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore; and in particular what the timings will be for that redevelopment.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)
My Lords:
“I am very grateful to have an opportunity of raising the question of the future of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. I also appreciate the courtesy of the Minister in coming to the House to reply. I hope that he will respond positively to my remarks on the future of the hospital”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/1984; col. 1413.]
I agree with those words, which are very relevant to today’s Question for Short Debate. However, they are not my words: I was quoting from the introductory remarks of Hugh Dykes—now the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, in this House—who was then the MP for Harrow East when he opened his debate on 25 May 1984, over 30 years ago. In his response, the Minister, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, John Patten MP—again, now a Member of your Lordships’ House—referred to the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, then a Minister, answering a Question in the House of Lords on the same topic from Lord Diamond. I could have quoted from a debate in Westminster Hall sponsored by the current honourable Member for Harrow East, Bob Blackman, on 4 March last year, at col. 347.
So the issue of the redevelopment of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital has been debated for 30 years. In that time there have been 13 independent reviews, all of which have concluded that the hospital should remain as an individual organisation, continuing to provide on the Stanmore site the excellent care that it has done for over 100 years of its existence.
The hospital has a national and international reputation for excellence and is the UK’s leading provider of specialist orthopaedic treatment and surgery. It is the nation’s largest provider of complex spinal surgery and it trains 25% of the nation’s orthopaedic surgeons. It is rated in the top 20% of hospitals in the national in-patient survey. Its 1,400 staff—70% of whom provide clinical services—look after some 15,000 in-patients and over 100,000 out-patient attendances every year. The care provided by the hospital is highly rated by the Care Quality Commission, which gave it outstanding for medical care, outstanding for clinical outcomes for patients, outstanding for innovative surgery to improve the quality of patients’ lives, and outstanding for the executive board, which it declared as,
“demonstrating leadership and vision for the hospital”.
It judged children and young people services as needing improvement, a factor being that the location of the wards for these patients meant that they had to be taken outside the buildings in order to access and return from theatre—one of the many reasons why a decision to proceed on the redevelopment is now, after over 30 years, not only pressing but urgent. A decision must be taken and acted on.
Indeed, the National Clinical Advisory Team review concluded that reprovision of services on the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital site was urgent given the condition of the estate and the potential impact on quality of services of any further delay. That is not surprising as some of the buildings go back to the Second World War, built for the airmen defending our shores in that conflict. They are totally unsuited for today’s needs of a modern health service.
Another review concluded that some £50 million was required to be spent on the backlog of maintenance and repairs to bring it up to the required standards. That is more than the cost of delivery of the proposed development now being considered.
So how does it get done? It is not too surprising—those of us who have worked in the public sector will possibly have experience with projects—that the redevelopment of this hospital has gone through several iterations over 30 years. Hopes have been raised and then dashed for a variety of reasons. But now, with a strong executive leadership and vision commended by the Care Quality Commission, the hospital has the best chance yet to get the go-ahead. Some in the hospital and its partners say it is the last chance. One said to me, “Brenda, it is a bit like the Elvis song, ‘It’s Now or Never’”, and, frankly, that is how it is seen by many associated with the hospital.
The outline business case was approved by the NHS Trust Development Authority in March last year. It came, unsurprisingly, with conditions, all of which have been addressed. The full business case is scheduled to be officially approved by the hospital board on 30 March and then submitted to the TDA. The hospital is not asking the Government for enormous sums of money, just £40 million—yes, that is a lot of money in anyone’s terms but, when you put it in the big picture, it is not. Half of that £40 million would be repaid immediately as land is released to a private development partner. The balance of £20 million would be a loan to be repaid by the hospital over 20 years. This is not a PFI scheme; the hospital will not be tied into a project of crippling fees on a never-ending merry-go-round. The TDA has said that it needs eight weeks after receipt of the final business plan to approve the money. Against that promise, the hospital has planned on a contract signature to go ahead by the end of June with Balfour Beatty, which is lined up to start on the site in July this year.
Mitigating the cost of the project will require some of the 112-acre site to be sold for redevelopment. Planning permission is in place and there is no local campaign against the project. It is all going in a positive direction, except for the decision. The hospital board submitted the necessary land sale part of the project to the NHS TDS Investment Committee in March this year, which was approved. The cost to build will be £42.5 million, which is why the initial £40 million investment is needed. The first build will be a ward block and completion of the first stage will allow for the sale of the land for redevelopment—decanting into the new building will release the land. This will bring in, according to the professional assessments, an estimated £20 million, which will be repaid immediately to the NHS.
The project is visionary and will secure not only world-class facilities for a hospital providing world- class treatments, but more than 300 new homes locally, including affordable housing, as well as staff accommodation for the hospital itself. The plans include a new private patient care centre, which will generate income from outside the NHS both nationally and internationally, as the hospital has international patients. Investment of £23.5 million, of which £16.5 million is from University College London, with the balance coming from the sale of the orthopaedic hospital land, will be used to build a new bioengineering hub, with UCL. This will increase the orthopaedic hospital’s role as a national research reference centre. In addition, the redevelopment will provide for the expansion of the current National Orthopaedic Alliance vanguard and getting it right first time programmes. All this will help to realise improved care and savings for not just this hospital but the wider NHS.
Before I close, I should cover the issue of the current financial position of the hospital. For the last six years it has been in surplus. This year, for the first time in quite a long period, as with the overwhelming majority of hospitals in the NHS, the hospital will be in deficit by circa £5 million—not the eye-watering amounts that we have seen elsewhere. That is for the year, not the month, as it is in some other parts of the NHS, particularly in London. It is most certainly not something that should cause a delay in approval to go ahead.
This hospital is not part of a big trust group; it is not, in that sense, a local hospital simply providing services for people in the area. It therefore has no active campaign group making a noise to make sure the development goes ahead. It is a national, and international, provider of excellent care. It deserves support in our UK national interest, with an ageing population needing the very services the hospital provides, because it is a centre of excellence leading the way in so many areas of speciality—and, yes, because it is so highly regarded internationally too.
I could put it no better than the statement of the Care Quality Commission itself, which said:
“The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital is a recognised world leader in treating patients with complex orthopaedic conditions”.
My request today, and the purpose of this debate, is to ask the Minister and his department for their full and active support in getting approval for the final business case to go ahead. Furthermore, I ask the Minister for his department to commit and lend support to the eight-week timetable given by the TDA. I ask for support to be given in minimising the barriers to the April to June period, given the history of delay, and that a clear, yes or no, decision is given, not a maybe.
I thank all Members of the House who have given up their time today to take part in this debate; it is just one hour but it is very important. I look forward to their contributions as much as I do to the Minister’s.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, on securing this brief debate on the future of the RNOH at Stanmore. I first came to know the hospital some 30 years ago when my wife was transferred there from Stoke Mandeville to continue her rehabilitation from the injuries she had suffered in the attempt by IRA/Sinn Fein to murder Prime Minister Thatcher. Indeed, until this year when the deterioration in her health has made the journey there from our home in East Anglia too arduous for her, my wife had continued to be a patient at Stanmore.
Through those years, we have also seen the development of the splendid charitable trust facilities to provide for both able-bodied and disabled people alongside the hospital, and they are an important part of the whole complex. Less happily, we have also seen the inability of successive Governments to get on with the long overdue replacement of the tatty, inefficient buildings which have hampered the skilled and loyal staff in their offering of the treatment needed by patients, not least the spinally injured ones, from around London and the Home Counties. We know that the extent of recovery from serious spinal injury is critically dependent on whether the patient can receive immediate care in a specialist unit. That is why Stanmore is so important to London and the Home Counties. I have lobbied many Ministers for many years over this rebuilding programme. At least it is now a great comfort that the most pernicious proposal—and I use that word as I usually use words, in its literal sense—of a PFI has been rejected. They are the most awful device which has ever been created in an attempt to dodge the rules of public sector accounting.
It seems, at last, that something like the charitable finance initiative, proposed by Mr Laurie Marsh and others, to finance the rebuilding of the hospital out of the profits from residential development of surplus land, is now to go ahead. I am, however, still concerned that—if I read the briefings right—the development of the surplus land is expected to yield only £20 million. That seems a pathetically small sum of money to come from the sale and development of residential land in the Stanmore area. It is extraordinarily small, and I hope that the Minister will look very closely at how that sum has been reached. Finally, I give heartfelt thanks for the great kindness and the care which my wife received at Stanmore, and I say to my noble friend Lord Prior, come on, for goodness’ sake get on with it.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Dean for this vital and timely debate. I am pleased to speak in the presence of the chairman and the chief executive. I am very glad to count myself among the friends of the RNOH. I have absolutely no experience or knowledge of the NHS, but I am speaking out of gratitude because my husband is a very appreciative patient at the royal national hospital, so I am in a similar position to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit.
My husband has an NHS position, which I should mention: he is chair of Whittington Health, a trust in north London which consists of a hospital and community services. He was initially treated at the Whittington last autumn for a very serious, life-threatening infection and received the most marvellous and dedicated care from the medics there, whom he and I cannot thank enough. Thanks to them and his own fighting spirit, he pulled through, but his leg had to be amputated, so he passed into the care of the royal national hospital, Stanmore, initially as an in-patient for five days. To be frank, my only personal experience derives from being a visitor there for those few days.
I was, it is fair to say, aghast when I first saw the hospital. “It’s a bunch of Nissen huts”, I exclaimed, which is, of course, precisely what much of it is. I did not see the whole estate, but as it was built in the 1940s, I think that that was fair comment. We went in through a heavy, plastic door, which was all that kept the winter winds from the ward into which we entered directly. So my second thought on arrival was, “What on earth are the heating bills?”. My third thought was that, on a dark winter night, having to find the visitors’ loo outside, across the road and down some steps was less than congenial.
So my first point is that this is no way to treat a national, indeed, an international, centre of excellence. The staff are first class and deliver excellent care, as recognised by the “outstanding” rating given to the hospital by the Care Quality Commission in 2014 for its medical care, which includes the rehabilitation from which my husband is benefiting. However, the staff, the patients, their families and the community are being horribly let down by the appallingly bad, old and decrepit physical conditions. The CQC said the hospital’s premises were,
“not fit for purpose – it does not provide an adequate environment to care and treat patients”,
which is, no doubt, why the ratings for out-patients and children’s services were, “requires improvement”. I did not see the children’s wards but I am told that they are the worst of all.
What is it doing to staff morale and the ability to attract the brightest and the best that the powers that be are stalling over the green light for desperately needed redevelopment? With the best will in the world, the morale of patients and their families, at a time when they may be very vulnerable, whether after an amputation or for another reason, will not be increased by such grotty surroundings.
Secondly, I want to express deep frustration at the delay in getting the go-ahead from the NHS Trust Development Authority. This unelected quango— I use that term not to be abusive but as a statement of fact—seems to be the body on which everything now depends. It approved the outline business case a year ago, and I do not understand why it takes so much to get to the final sign-off and permission to borrow.
When the local MP, Bob Blackman, with whom I have been fortunate to have a word, initiated a short but very valuable debate a year ago, the Minister, Dr Daniel Poulter, rightly said of the RNOH:
“With the care it provides to its patients, it is one of the best centres in the world … a leader in the field of orthopaedics in the UK and worldwide”—
including through training and research, and—
“produces the very best possible care and results for patients … The RNOH is renowned worldwide for its clinical excellence”,
He said:
“I am aware that most of the buildings at Stanmore date from the 1940s, and many are no longer appropriate or fit for purpose for the high-quality care and excellent clinical outcomes that the RNOH provides for its patients”.
He agreed:
“The RNOH’s proposed redevelopment of the Stanmore site is key to ensuring that it can continue to improve the care it provides”.
I was a little worried by his comment that the RNOH,
“manages to maintain high standards of outcomes despite the condition of the estate ”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/3/15; cols. 350-51WH.]
That is only through the heroic efforts of its staff, which no doubt cannot be taken indefinitely for granted. If they are being heroic about rising above their surroundings, I would prefer their heroic efforts to go into patient care.
Dr Poulter acknowledged the frustration at the delays, saying that due diligence was necessary to ensure financial viability. That is understandable, but the TDA has been on the case for three years, asking for more and more information. As we have heard, the deliberations have gone on for 30 years. Planning permission was received three years ago, which was, of course, the result of a transparent and democratic process by the London Borough of Harrow.
Given the high degree of centralisation of the NHS, I am bemused by the gap between expressed ministerial support and the lack of speedy output from the TDA. Surely the Government cannot be saying that they have no levers to encourage the TDA to get on with it. The medical case for a modern, state-of-the-art hospital seems unanswerable, and it seems that the financial case is equally sound and straightforward. It was given by the noble Baroness. The debate that Bob Blackman MP held was followed five days later by TDA approval of the outline business case. Let us hope that we, through this debate, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, might have a similar catalytic effect on its final decision. I look forward to hearing from the Minister that this will indeed be the case.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate and to join colleagues in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, on securing the debate and on the way she introduced it. She absolutely captured a sense of what the RNOH is and has been, and what it means for the patients whom it has looked after.
In that respect, I share with my noble friend Lord Tebbit a sense of gratitude for how the RNOH has looked after Margaret Tebbit. Indeed, it was at exactly the same time 30 years ago that I first got to know Stanmore because I was the Civil Service Private Secretary to my noble friend, who was then Secretary of State. When I was not carrying his box to and fro at Stanmore, I was learning about the hospital. About 25 years later, it was somewhat ironic that my noble friend was lobbying me as Secretary of State to secure the rebuilding of Stanmore. I believe he was right when he said that it would have been wholly wrong to have pursued the PFI route to secure the rebuilding of Stanmore. It was my responsibility in 2011 to say that that was not the way I thought Stanmore should go. I am pleased that that is not the way that the RNOH chose to go.
I will quickly say three things. First, I believe in specialist institutes in the NHS. That was not always the case. I remember that probably 25 or so years ago, Stanmore was being pushed to merge with Northwick Park. Subsequently, there were other proposals for the hospital to be absorbed into a large trust. All the evidence tells us that this is the wrong way to go. Amazingly, specialist institutes in the orthopaedic field, not just the RNOH but the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen near Oswestry, obtain excellent results. That is true for clinical outcomes and for innovation and research. When we introduced the friends and family test, I was especially struck by what fantastic numbers the specialist institutes, such as Stanmore and Gobowen, got on recommendations through the friends and family test from staff and patients. That is incontrovertible. That being the case, we have to find ways to support them where they are.
Secondly, the partnerships that they create are tremendously important. Papworth Hospital in my former constituency is going alongside Addenbrooke’s. It will remain a specialist institute but it needs to be alongside for clinical partnerships and research partnerships. Given its location, Stanmore does not need to move anywhere else for these partnerships to function. Indeed, as the noble Baroness said in introducing the debate, it has drawn UCL into an excellent bioengineering centre based at Stanmore. That is evidence of the partnerships that are integral to specialist institutes’ future success, not least because they need to be part of the academic health science networks to make that success work. Creating those partnerships is tremendously important and can secure its position.
Thirdly, and finally, however, we need to understand where the difficulties lie. RNOH is an extremely well-run hospital and has been for a very long time. The calibre of staffing and clinical leadership is excellent. For example, when we looked at MRSA bloodstream infections, notwithstanding the circumstances in which RNOH works, I do not think it has had such an infection for about seven years. That is a wonderful record. When you look at clinical leadership, Tim Briggs, a clinician at Stanmore, has been integral to the work that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and his team are doing on delivering improvement and efficiency by demonstrating how it was done at the RNOH.
However, since the NHS is the overwhelming customer for this work, it is very hard if the tariff does not support it. We must recognise that the heart of the issue lies in the prudential work done by the TDA—and before it by the strategic health authorities and others—to ensure that the project and the hospital are financially sustainable for the long run. Frankly, it is not just about asking, “Is this a good project?” or, as my noble friend asked, “Do the numbers all stack up?”. I am sure that it can be afforded in the sense of borrowing being available, but what also needs to be affordable in the long run is the revenue to support it. That is where NHS England and Monitor, working together, need to bring in tariffs—not least through the latest iteration of ICD tariff structures when they get to them—that recognise the additional costs involved in the complex and specialised work done by hospitals such as the RNOH. Many big hospitals used to be able to carry such specialist work in the midst of very large amounts of routine work, but a specialist institute cannot do that. Indeed, many large hospitals cannot afford to do it now either. We need the NHS and Monitor together to design a tariff that recognises not only the quality but the cost involved in continuing to deliver this world-leading work.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure and honour to follow the former Secretary of State, whose analysis I agree with entirely. It is good to focus on these issues again. The analysis given by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, who we thank for initiating the debate, was exactly spot on about the problems facing a hospital that I thought would be redeveloped and modernised years ago. I remember the speeches I made on this—one from 1984 was referred to, but there were many others after that. I had the great honour of being a member of the board of governors in the old days of the teaching hospital. Subsequently, I was chairman of the save the hospital action committee when there was a threat of closure in the 1980s. I had the pleasure of being president of the league of friends for many years.
When I first went to the hospital in 1972, I immediately fell in love with the place. Its history is magical, given what it achieved in the war, what it did for brave airmen and other service men and women who were injured—incredibly hideously sometimes—and its work of repair. Subsequently, in inadequate buildings, the amazing achievements of this hospital have been really stunning. I am so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, was able to make his tribute to its work as well as to offer his analysis about the facts and figures. I remember exchanging correspondence with him when Margaret Tebbit went there for the first time. I was so glad about the treatment she received after that horrific incident. The noble Lord has been a good champion of the hospital ever since.
It really is now time. The analysis has gone on for so long. When I was defeated in the 1997 election, I never believed that it would take so long for this to get going. There is no reason for any further delay. The amounts of money are minuscule and modest. I also rather share the apprehension of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, about the amount of money to be realised by property sales. In that area, where property values are stupendous, if it is a free market syndrome—presumably it will be in the final analysis when the transaction is completed—then it should be done on a much higher basis. Maybe that can be looked at again, although I am not in any way criticising the present management team because it has dealt with this for a long time and knows all the ins and outs.
However, there is now no excuse or reason for any further significant delay. This is a magical specialist hospital with a wonderful history. It has a future that will be even greater. We are also getting to grips with new technology and new invention possibilities, particularly in spinal injury cases. An exciting scenario is opening up with the recent developments that have been announced in many parts of the world, including, of course, in the United States. That, too, is an opportunity for this hospital to shine again as it has done over so many years.
There is a lot of local loyalty. It is interesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said that there is no campaign against redevelopment, which there often would be if suddenly there was going to be an urban sprawl created around a hospital. Not a bit of it: there is a lot of local geographical loyalty and a history of support in the London Borough of Harrow as well. This hospital needs to remain separate but specialist, with modern buildings and new facilities, to build on patient care, especially that of physically injured children, which is a very important area.
I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for this debate and repeat the sagacious advice of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, to the Minister to get on with it please.
Lord Finkelstein (Con)
My Lords, occasionally it happens in the House of Lords that after five people have spoken everyone else starts to repeat the arguments that have already been made. I am the sixth to speak and will do so briefly.
I start with the words of the Secretary of State for Health:
“I visited the hospital two years ago and it was clear to me then that the facilities on the site did not match with the world renowned status of RNOH. I am thrilled to announce the rebuild of the Stanmore site today. ... The urgent need for this rebuild has been apparent for many years now”.
Quite right too, except that the Secretary of State in question was Andy Burnham and the statement that he made was in 2010. The Health Minister said:
“I fully accept that the buildings at the hospital are not ideal at present. That is why the trust has made its proposals and the London regional office is currently considering them. … It would be very unfortunate if no progress was made on refurbishment over a number of years. We should look at this issue with some sympathy”.—[Official Report, 28/2/01; col. 1293-94.]
Quite right too, except that the Health Minister was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the year was 2001.
The Health Minister said:
“A detailed appraisal of the options for capital development at Stanmore should be undertaken”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/1988; col. 1402.]
Quite right too, except that the Health Minister was Edwina Currie and the year was 1988. In considering the future of Stanmore, the Health Minister said that,
“my hon. Friend will be familiar with some of those problems, including the very poor condition of some of the buildings”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/1984; col. 1418.]
We have already heard that, and quite right too, except that the Health Minister in question was John Patten—as he was then—and the year was 1984. Another Health Minister said:
“My Lords, I am aware of the faintly unsatisfactory state of the Stanmore premises”.—[Official Report, 3/5/1984; col. 632.]
Quite right too, except that the Minister was my noble friend Lady Trumpington and the year again was 1984.
The arguments have been made today and in the past, and for many years, for rebuilding Stanmore RNOH and they do not need my elaboration. They have been made for more than 30 years and they are so obvious that they make themselves. We now need action.
I have risen really just for one purpose, which is to add my name to those people demanding action and to add my sense of urgency to that of the others around the table. To have a world-class facility that requires action, to agree upon action and then not act is shameful. There is no point in saying that we are the builders if we do not build.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, mea culpa. The noble Lord certainly got me bang to rights. As noble Lords have heard, many noble Lords and Ministers have commented on the position of the RNOH. I start by paying tribute to it for its outstanding work. I certainly paid a ministerial visit. I do not know about the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but I remember digging a hole in the ground there. Alas, I think that the hole is still there. I have no doubt he too has been to see the site to look at where the development would take place.
Clearly, a powerful case for this wonderful hospital’s development has been made by my noble friend. It is significant that the NHS TDA gave business-case approval a year ago. Therefore, it is absolutely right to press the Minister to say what on earth has happened and why the NHS TDA apparently, if not reversing its decision, does not seem to be able to take it any further forward.
I pay one other tribute to the RNOH and that is to the partnerships that are developing. We have already heard about UCL, but my noble friend Lady Dean is also aware of the work that is being done with the Royal Free. That is very encouraging in relation to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of specialist hospitals working with other hospitals.
I shall put four or five points to the Minister. First, it is always risky to ask a Minister for a straight answer, but it seems to me that the time has come when a straight answer needs to be given. If it is no, no should be said, and the hospital can make other dispositions. It surely cannot be left in abeyance for another one, two or three years because it must be impossible for the people running this institution to know whether to invest any money in the current infrastructure, whether they should wait, what they should do about the staff and how they retain staff. An honest answer is required at the very least.
Secondly, is the state of the current public capital programme within the Department of Health having an impact? I know of the Department of Health’s financial difficulties towards the end of this financial year, and the five-year forward look at money for the NHS involves a transfer of capital to revenue. What has happened to the public capital programme? Is that the real reason that the NHS TDA cannot give approval?
The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and I probably disagree about PFI because, although some of the contracts were clearly badly negotiated, we have very fine buildings and hospitals as a result of it. However, if there is no public capital—and public capital is much less than was expected—and we do not use PFI, how are we going to see investment in health infrastructure over the next five to 10 years? It is a very serious question which the noble Lord, Lord Prior, is, no doubt, looking at very carefully.
I want to come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. We have already heard of the number of reviews that have taken place. All have come to the conclusion that this hospital should be redeveloped on its current site, yet he will be aware that within the NHS managerial culture there is opposition to single-site specialty hospitals. I wonder whether at heart the issue is that, although Ministers and reviews have said this hospital should be redeveloped, the truth is that the managerial cadre at NHSE and in London do not think it should take place. That was always my suspicion. When I answered that debate in 2001, the distinct impression I had was that actually the powers that be, below ministerial level, simply did not want this to happen because they do not believe in specialist hospitals. The noble Lord mentioned Oswestry. He could have mentioned the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham as well, which is another stand-alone hospital. I have always got the impression that senior executives in NHS England now and before in the department think these hospitals should not be stand-alone and should move into DGHs. It is legitimate to ask whether this is the real reason. Given that NHS TDA officials almost all come from NHS managerial backgrounds, I ask whether this is the real reason, alongside the squeeze on capital.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked about the tariff. It is my impression that NHS England is not favourably disposed towards specialist services in general and that the squeeze on specialty tariffs is because of that. I remind him of the order that he forced through this House taking away the right of providers to object to tariff proposals. They can no longer use the arbitration system because they need commissioners to object as well, and frankly the chance of a commissioner objecting to any tariff proposals by NHS England is a little remote.
Finally, will the Minister arrange for the NHS TDA to meet parliamentarians to discuss this urgently? The NHS TDA has new leadership: its chief executive and its chair. Mr Ed Smith will bring a great deal of fresh thinking to the work of the NHS TDA, and I would appreciate an opportunity for noble Lords to talk with him further rather than either the decision being delayed for many more months or years or it simply not going ahead.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for bringing forward this debate. I did not know anything about the history of Stanmore until today and the briefing I had beforehand. It has been an extremely good debate. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Finkelstein that we have reached the stage where everything has been said but not everyone has said it. I fall into that category. Let me put on record that I agree with everything the noble Baroness said in her speech rather than repeating it, as I would otherwise have done.
I wish to address a number of points and themes. First, this is not a PFI. We need not today go into the pros and cons of PFIs, save to say that my sympathies are with my noble friend Lord Tebbit: many of them have been incredibly expensive. When he used the word “pernicious” I think he meant that not only were they expensive but they have hidden liabilities that should appear on the public sector balance sheet. He may like to know that the future costs of the PFI schemes for health alone total £79 billion. This includes some of the soft FM contracts but it is a huge liability that ought to be on the face of the public balance sheet but is not. I say that on PFI, but this is not a PFI scheme.
Secondly, my noble friend Lord Tebbit and others made reference to the land sales that are part of this scheme. We use our property resource in the NHS fantastically badly. I am not saying whether or not the £20 million assumption here is a low level of money but sometimes in the NHS, because we are in a hurry, we sell things off quickly, whereas if we had more time and could explore matters through a joint venture or a more creative arrangement we might be able to bring in a lot more money. That is something I would ask the management to look at, but not as a way of deferring this scheme. I am pleased that Rob Hurd and Professor Goldstone, respectively the chief executive and chairman of the RNOH, are here today listening to this. We do not deal properly with our massive property resource. In gross terms we have £40 billion to £50 billion-worth of property assets within the NHS, which we do not use very well. If we walk around London we can see some of our hospitals in prime residential areas. These are worth a huge amount of money which we could use to redevelop our real estate within the NHS.
Thirdly, Stanmore is not only a beacon of excellence but the work that Professor Tim Briggs is doing to spread his Getting It Right First Time scheme across the NHS is hugely important. If we are going to get long-term sustainable improvement for the NHS we must have clinical engagement. The work that he is doing through his exposure of variation in orthopaedic practice is hugely important. If we can spread the learning that he has gained in orthopaedics into other surgical and medical specialties, it will make a huge contribution to the massive saving programme that we need to achieve over the next five years. Related to that, the fact that the RNOH is leading the National Orthopaedic Alliance vanguard around the country with a view to franchising the excellence in the RNOH into DGHs and other hospitals around the country must be a good thing.
My noble friend Lord Lansley raised the issue about specialist institutions. I agree the evidence is that, from a patient and clinical outcome point of view, specialist institutions are extremely successful. However, there are two caveats to that. One is that they can become insular; and the second is that they can be high cost. Often they are relatively small institutions and, because the tariff does not favour complex specialist work, they can be a disadvantage to the tariff.
The RNOH has addressed that insularity issue in two ways: first, through the tie-up with UCL on the biomedical engineering facility; and, secondly, through developing its work with the Royal Free, which is very important. That may enable it to take some costs out of its existing institutions.
The tariff, which my noble friend also raised, is something that we should address with NHS England and with NHS Improvement to be sure that it does not favour just those more commodity or routine orthopaedic operations at the expense of the more specialised, complex operations. I think—and my noble friend will know more about this than I do—that, originally, the tariff was structured to encourage the private sector to come into the more routine, so to speak, orthopaedic business. It has disadvantaged the more specialist institutions, which is something that we need to address. If I were coming here to say, “No, we’re not going to do this”, I would have to deal with not just my noble friend Lord Tebbit but an even burlier character in Professor Tim Briggs. He is a fairly typical orthopaedic surgeon and saying no to orthopaedic surgeons is never a happy experience.
I am, as I say, leaving aside the speech I would have made because it would simply repeat what has already been said. The TDA received the trust’s revised outline business case in January last year. Following its review of the business case, the TDA required assurances on two strands of work to be completed. The first was the development of an interdependent estates strategy and land disposal business case for the Stanmore site. The second was the further development of the NHS England vanguard partnership with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust as part of securing the long-term sustainability of the trust. In relation to the vanguard partnership, the trust plans to present a formal report to the TDA on progress ahead of the full business case submission. Negotiations with the Royal Free have gone well, with an MoU between the two organisations signed, which aims to identify the clinical synergies of the two organisations and how their working more closely together could strengthen the clinical model. Those discussions have gone extremely well.
An outline business case for the land sale has been submitted by the trust and approved by the TDA investment committee and will go to the full TDA board. That should not hold up this project. If there is a way of increasing the receipts from the land sale, then clearly the management will be trying to do so. A full business case containing Balfour Beatty’s final proposals for the redevelopment of the hospital is expected to go to the trust’s board on 30 March. In April, the trust is expected to submit a full business case to NHS Improvement for review. In June and July the full business case is expected to go to NHS Improvement’s investment committee and, following that, to the NHS Improvement board. Approval will allow the trust both to clear the site available for sale and to fund the part of the new facility not covered by the land sale receipt. Construction will be completed in December 2017, with the new facility opening to patients in February 2018.
To conclude, this is very much a priority project for the Department of Health and NHS Improvement. The Government fully support the redevelopment of the RNOH and are grateful for the contribution it has made to the Getting It Right First Time project, led by Professor Briggs. I am happy to arrange a meeting, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, requested, with NHS Improvement on this issue. If it is all proceeding according to plan, that meeting might not be necessary but, if there is a glitch, I am happy to come back for another debate, but we fully support this and can see no reason why it will not be given the go-ahead according to the timetable that I suggested. Before I sit down, is there anything that noble Lords would like to raise that I have not covered?
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
We are not often asked to intervene in a Minister’s contribution so I thank the Minister very much indeed and welcome his contribution. If the hospital reaches any glitches, will his door be open for a meeting with the CEO and chairman of the hospital?
Lord Prior of Brampton
Yes, any time. I should have said that I have not had a chance to visit Stanmore but I would certainly like to do that. We are fully behind this case. I will go to the hospital anyway, but I hope that this will go ahead on this timescale.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
They hope to break the land—first spade in—on 7 July. How wonderful it would be if the Minister did it.
Lord Prior of Brampton
Perhaps at the same time we could fill in the hole dug by my predecessor.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
As an ex-patient of the hospital, I can say that the Committee stands adjourned until 4 pm.
Occupied Palestinian Territories: Development
Lord Hylton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government to what extent they will implement the recommendations of the House of Commons International Development Committee in their report of July 2014, The UK’s Development Work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I thank all the contributors to this debate. It may seem odd to discuss a Select Committee report of the other place one and a half years later. One reason is that a major war came between the report’s publication and the printing of the Government’s response. Also, the tunnels providing a lifeline to Gaza have been cut off. Another reason is that for many years British NGOs have worked very constructively in occupied Palestine. The report had 16 positive recommendations. I therefore ask to what extent violence in 2014 and since, with the collapse of the peace process, have made implementation difficult or impossible.
The UN organisations’ forecast that Gaza may become “uninhabitable” by 2020—just four years away—shows how things are getting worse. As for the West Bank, this was split into three by the Oslo accords of 1995. The Palestinian Authority is responsible only for Area A. It shares responsibility with Israel in Area B, while Israel totally controls Area C. I have personally seen a big sign saying, “Welcome to Israel” as one approaches the Dead Sea from Jerusalem. The temporary division into zones has become permanent. The Palestinian economy and revenue would be dramatically improved by good access to Area C.
The Department for International Development helps occupied Palestine in three main ways. First, it pays the salaries of many of the employees of the Palestinian Authority. This is understandable in view of the periodic withholding of Palestinian taxes by Israel. However, I would ask whether some of those employees in Gaza are now being paid to do nothing because of a failure to agree between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Secondly, DfID supports UNRWA in education, health and welfare for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. This reflects the absence since 1948 of a full peace agreement. DfID seems to expect UNRWA to make efficiency savings but how can this be done when the school population rises steadily and unemployment is sky high in both Gaza and the West Bank? Thirdly, DfID funds the health system, which has a chronic shortage of medical supplies. It tries to stimulate the Palestinian economy and assist selected NGOs. Will the Minister give us an update on these important sectors? Can he say something about land registration and title deeds?
I will mention some broad themes, trusting that later speakers will develop them. Water is a matter of life and death. Will Gaza have water safe to drink in four years’ time? A desalinator is urgently needed. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers use far more water per head than Palestinians. They also pay less per litre. In Area C, Palestinians are often refused permission for new wells.
Movement and access are critical. Some progress was being made by 2005. However, Gaza has never had the airport, seaport and secure link to the West Bank that it was supposed to have. It is blockaded and cut off from the outside world. Only minimum supplies are let in to sustain life without starvation. Access is equally important in the fragmented Areas A, B and C.
In illegally annexed east Jerusalem and the long-occupied West Bank, Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace, as is the position on the ground of the separation wall. This is made worse by demolishing Palestinian houses, buildings and solar panels, et cetera, even some built with EU funds. The number of checkpoints is also unhelpful.
Israel has justified much intransigence because of threats from Iran, but do these amount to more than a paper tiger? The Hamas charter is often quoted, though this was written long ago and was never approved by the people. Homemade, unguided rockets have been seen as existential threats, so Hamas has been demonised. Little attention, however, has been given to Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and al-Qaeda or Daesh splinter groups, over which Hamas has only partial control.
I come now to our Government’s attitude to consistent illegality and disregard of international law. Successive Governments have treated Israel as a western ally, only making mild protests which are usually disregarded. There are seldom or never political, military or economic consequences following our protests. The nearest we have got is over the labelling of products from illegal settlers. Can the noble Lord tell us the latest news on labelling? Can British consumers always know where goods labelled as Israeli or Palestinian actually come from? Has the well-being of the Palestinian people, whether in east Jerusalem, Gaza or the West Bank, improved or slipped back since 2014? Have our considerable investments of money and thought been effective or have they barely staved off disaster?
I suggest that things are, in fact, getting worse. This explains the great frustration of the Palestinians who have recently expressed their anger by personal attacks on individual Israelis. Unless all sides quickly de-escalate and produce measures to build confidence, individual attacks may turn into collective ones. The demand for sanctions, boycott and disinvestment will grow throughout the rest of the world. What will HMG do to secure as great political priority for Israel and Palestine as they want to see for Syria and Iraq? Both are necessary if extremism, Islamism and terror are to be contained let alone ended. Israel, Palestine and the West all have equal interests in a just and sustainable peace.
Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for this debate and on the way he has moved it. The Commons Select Committee report is interesting, but also now depressing. Although the report is only 20 months or so old, the situation it describes has got considerably worse. Its recommendations are even more valid, as the noble Lord has said. I have been visiting Palestine for family reasons for well over 40 years. Throughout that time, short periods of optimism have always been dashed as the situation has got progressively worse for the Palestinians, with more of their land illegally built over by Israel and more of the restrictions that shocked this Select Committee. Grinding poverty, artificially imposed by occupation, hinders peace. It can also suppress cultural development.
For example, I believe that music opens hearts and builds bridges. For that reason I am a trustee of the UK Friends of the Palestine Music Conservatory. To bring a positive note to this debate, I am delighted to tell noble Lords that the Palestine Youth Orchestra will be touring the UK in July and August, playing in Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and London. The tour will, of course, be a very special experience for the young people involved, whose lives are normally so appallingly restricted, but more than that, I hope it will also open British hearts and minds to their cultural achievements. Occupation crushes hope and without hope the future is, indeed, bleak for the holy land.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I give real appreciation, once more, to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. I declare an interest: in my past I was a Minister of State in the Foreign Office, responsible for the Middle East, among other functions; and I was, for some years, director of Oxfam, which has a long history of involvement in Gaza, Israel itself and the West Bank.
Some 61% of the West Bank is under full Israeli military control, as any of us who have been there can underline, with all the restraints that this brings—on agriculture, free movement of people and economic activity in general. On a human level, if Palestinians build essential structures, such as shelters, toilets or schools, without permits from the Israeli military, these are at risk of demolition. More than 98% of Palestinian applications were rejected between 2010 and 2014 and less than 1% of Area C has been planned for Palestinian development by the Israeli authorities.
The rate of demolitions in the West Bank has spiralled since the beginning of 2016, with 316 homes demolished in the first two months of the year, compared with 447 for all of 2015. It is essential that we in Britain, and our Government, directly challenge Israel’s inadequate and discriminatory permit and planning regime by initiating development projects that we believe are necessary in Area C, whether or not master plans have been submitted in these localities. While, of course, informing the Israeli authorities of our humanitarian strategies, we must move ahead without necessarily seeking prior approval from those authorities. DfID simply must move faster and more effectively to bring more humanitarian aid to vulnerable Area C, especially in the E1 area and the Jordan valley.
On Gaza, I will just say this in the time available: DfID’s approach should focus on building resilience and challenging the separation policy between Gaza and the West Bank. Support for longer-term development and investment in Gaza is essential. Very many Palestinians in Gaza, however, will struggle to move from aid dependency until the political and structural causes of their situation are addressed and their full range of rights is achieved.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, may I interrupt? When 2 comes up on the clock, that is time. I am anxious to give as much of a reply as is possible within the time allocated to me.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on this debate. Of course we all hope for a peace agreement and a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in security, but sadly that is not happening yet. The government response said:
“Economic progress can never be a substitute for a political settlement, but it is vital that Palestinians see tangible improvements in their daily lives”,
and that,
“increased prosperity in the OPTs is firmly in Israel’s long-term interests”.
I agree with that. Will the Government tell us what more they are doing to fund people-to-people projects, which the report urged? We need more constructive dialogue, yet in DfID’s 2013 budget only £73,000—0.1% of the £70 million budget—was spent on coexistence. Will more such projects be funded in future?
I am pleased to congratulate the Palestinian teacher Hanan Al Hroub on winning the Global Teacher Prize for the work she is doing to combat violence. However, I was sad to see in the report that Palestinians in the audience pumped their fists in the air and chanted, “With our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for you, Palestine”, which rather spoiled the event.
I welcome DfID’s launch of the Palestinian market development programme, but a report by the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity has highlighted the amount of corruption in the Palestinian territories. This coalition is funded by several European Governments and the EU. Will the Government also fund this excellent organisation?
Are the Government taking steps to pressure the Palestinian Authority into ending awards to prisoners’ families, which give a perverse incentive to violence? The amount awarded increases with the period of imprisonment, which seems unrelated to poverty or the welfare of the family. We need to persuade it to change that system.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and I declare my interests as set out in the register. The report clearly appreciates Israel’s security concerns but at the same time notes that the measures taken in the name of security actually make it worse. It is therefore sobering that this report was published just as the Israeli military’s Operation Protective Edge was beginning in Gaza.
In the light of what we now know to be the impact of this military operation, irrespective of whether you feel it was justified, the claim in the committee’s conclusions that Israeli security measures can cause “very real suffering” is all the more true. Following the 2014 attacks, the UK Government generously reacted to the acute needs of the newly injured and disabled by providing access to limb reconstruction services in Gaza through a charity of which I am president—Medical Aid for Palestinians—in partnership with IDEALS. Teams of UK surgeons travelled to Gaza to undertake surgery on victims of the bombing and to train local surgeons in new techniques in this area. I am delighted to report that this work has now helped establish the first dedicated limb reconstruction unit in Gaza.
The UK has also been supporting projects in Area C of the West Bank. This vital work is helping sustain communities that face daily threats of eviction, demolitions and intimidation. In just the first few months of this year, more EU and internationally funded structures in Area C have been demolished than in the whole of 2015.
UK development work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a vital lifeline for Palestinians and for efforts towards peace. It is essential that the UK combines support for construction and service provision in the OPT with advocacy in our bilateral relations with our ally Israel to ensure that everyone is reminded that the UK supports the Palestinians’ right to statehood, just as we support Israel, and that if we are to achieve the peace that we all long for it is essential that the rights and livelihoods of Palestinians are protected.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing this debate. As someone who wants to see the flourishing of both Israel and Palestine, I welcome this report, although I am saddened by the situation that has developed since its publication. In their response to the report, the Government affirm their support of a two-state solution. If that is to remain a possibility, we surely need to do all we can to persuade Israel to end the demolition of Palestinian homes and the confiscation of Palestinian land throughout the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, has drawn attention to the spiralling numbers of such demolitions. Abu Nwar is one of 46 Bedouin and herding communities that are targeted by the Government of Israel’s plan to relocate 7,000 Palestinians living in Area C, including in the contentious E1 area around Jerusalem, in order to allow for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the central West Bank. Diplomatic representatives visited Abu Nwar on several occasions, reaffirming that demolitions and settlement expansion in the E1 area were a clear red line for the European Union as they would effectively cut the West Bank in half, separate east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and render the objective of a viable two-state solution unachievable.
If a two-state solution is to be viable, there is also a pressing need for a genuinely transformative peace process that is underpinned by international law, holds all to account and, crucially, is supported by mechanisms that allow both parties to understand the narratives of the other, not least the territorial expressions of identity that both express and promote.
Finally, as has been suggested, development work in the Occupied Territories cannot be separated from what is happening in Gaza and there needs to be an increased effort to help bring an urgent end to the blockade of Gaza and the collective punishment of the Gazan population.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating this important and timely debate. Securing a sustainable future for the Occupied Palestinian Territories is essential to establishing peace in the Middle East. The International Development Select Committee’s report on the UK’s development work in the region outlines how we are helping that process. I welcome the committee’s report and the Government’s response. However, while I support the reasons for funding development of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I have concerns regarding how the funding is used. Unsuitable use hampers the economic and political security of the region, making development a counterproductive objective in this case.
It is common knowledge that the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs provides salaries to all families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The Palestinian Government have been accused on a number of occasions of using UK aid to fund these salaries. The Palestinian Government have failed to provide evidence to the contrary and I am very uneasy with the idea that British aid could be used towards encouraging violent crimes. What steps have the Government taken to ensure that British funding is not used in this manner? We need to see this funding as an opportunity. Both the committee’s report and the Government’s response support a two-state solution in the region, leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a sustainable and sovereign Palestinian state.
Overall, I welcome the report in providing a foundation for peace. However, we must remember that:
“Economic progress can never be a substitute for a political settlement”,
and we must ensure that the recommendations put forward are carefully monitored to ensure that they are indeed used for economic purposes and not hijacked for ulterior motives.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)
My Lords, one of the many important recommendations from the committee is to encourage the development of entrepreneurship and other economic activity in the Palestinian Territories. Of course, this was precisely the mandate given to the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in 2007 when he became the unpaid envoy of the quartet. It is a little-acknowledged fact that he had considerable success in such development, at least in the West Bank—of course, Gaza presented special difficulties because of Hamas. The West Bank benefited from an excellent growth rate from 2008 to 2011 and projected growth for 2016 is 3.9%.
In my recent visits to Ramallah—the last just three weeks ago—I witnessed the boom in construction and housebuilding. I have also frequently visited Rawabi, the exciting and both inspirational and aspirational new town on the West Bank now awaiting its first inhabitants. DfID’s funding of the Palestinian market development programme is an encouraging first step in this right direction. Can the Minister give any information about developments on this?
However, I have seen for myself the very disturbing contents of some of the Palestinian children’s TV programmes and reading material, which incite violence and hatred against Israel and Jews—and I mean Jews, not Israelis—and this is a really horrible sight. I agree completely with the committee’s recommendation that DfID should check on the misuse of its funds. With great respect to the Minister, the Government’s response to that recommendation is far too complacent.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating this debate and refer noble Lords to my non-financial interests. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and my noble friend Lord Popat have said, the Palestinian Authority spends around 6% of its overall budget on paying salaries to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and to the families of suicide bombers. Will the Minister comment on whether the UK taxpayer is getting value for money?
The report also recommended the urgent address of the Gaza health sector, which it deemed in a situation of grave crisis. I have no doubt that nothing has changed and I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendations to reinstate the health sector as a key priority for DfID’s Palestinian programme. As we all know, trying to sort out and improve any health sector is difficult, but I will share with noble Lords a practical initiative which could be supported and that makes a difference to individuals and families. Save a Child’s Heart is an international, non-political NGO founded in 1996 for the sole purpose of improving the quality of paediatric cardiac care for children from areas in the world where there are few or no facilities and, thus, little or no chance of the child surviving. This NGO brings children to Israel for urgent heart treatment and surgery and, in addition, brings over the physicians and nurses from other countries and provides them with in-depth training so they can go back and continue this vital work. This all takes place at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, which I have visited on five or six occasions, often with Members of the other place.
Over 50% of the 4,000 children who received this life-saving treatment are from Gaza and the West Bank. On a Tuesday morning, there is a clinic for children from Gaza. I have been there and chatted to the worried parents whose children are ill and receive the chance of life from Save a Child’s Heart in Israel. Does the Minister agree that the clearly positive interaction between Gazan parents and children with the volunteer doctors and nurses in Israel is not only commendable but a worthy exercise in itself? Will he agree to meet me and explore ways that DfID could support and enhance this work which would help fulfil recommendations 33 and 34?
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, if we in Britain want to play a useful role in aiding the Palestinians, it is unhelpful to be laying the blame for their difficulties on one or other side. Just as we have heard the onus being placed on Israel for all the Palestinians’ problems, so one could point to the many Palestinian failures to take opportunities offered over the years, most recently when Mr Abbas turned down Joe Biden’s proposals for bilateral negotiations a week or so ago. However, I am not convinced that pointing the finger does any good.
The saddest thing I heard when I visited Ramallah in the West Bank a couple of weeks ago was from Khalil Shikaki, who has been conducting opinion polls among the Palestinian public for many years. He collaborates closely with his Israeli counterparts and he found that support for a two-state solution, in both publics, was at its lowest ebb for many years. More depressing was that the reason it was so low was that the Palestinians thought that the Israelis did not want a two-state solution and the Israelis thought that the Palestinians did not want it either. They themselves would go for it if only the other side wanted it, too. It was a complete misunderstanding of the opposition’s view.
If we want to make a difference for the Palestinians, should we not try to shift opinion among the public towards peace? Should we not be encouraging a re-education towards an understanding of what the man in the street on the other side really thinks and wants? Can we shift the emphasis in the publicity campaigns being run, I fear, by the Palestinian leadership, away from extolling the virtues of terrorism and towards a greater understanding of the infinitely more valuable virtues of peace?
This is what at least some of our aid should be used for and there are innumerable examples of close collaboration at the grass-roots level that we should be fostering. I know of many good, below-the-radar examples in the medical and commercial fields. These are where we need to focus our support, instead of it being diverted to fanning the flames by the leadership as I fear too much of it is now. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Sheikh (Con)
My Lords, I am glad that the Government have agreed to support the recommendations of the International Development Committee. Achieving lasting peace between Israel and Palestine must remain a significant priority for the international community.
In October last year in the other place, MPs voted by 274 to 12 on a Motion to recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. We must all work to the establishment of a two-state solution, with a viable sovereign independent state of Palestine living peacefully alongside a secure Israel. I ask the Minister: what is our current attitude in regard to recognition of the state of Palestine?
I care about humanitarian issues and have been involved in facilitating four convoys of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza following the Israeli invasion in 2009. I subsequently visited Gaza and saw for myself the devastation that has been done and tragically continues to this date. I have also visited Israel and the West Bank. I am very concerned about what is going on there with regard to stabbings and other killings which are being carried out by both sides. The cycle of violence appears to be unending.
There are commonalities between Islam and Judaism and it is therefore important that there is a dialogue between the two sides. I met with the acting ambassador of Israel last week and welcomed the positive statement he made about the passage of humanitarian aid to Gaza. We would, however, like to see a peaceful settlement and a lifting of the blockade. The UK and others must continue to support peace talks, keep hopes of the two-state solution alive and provide funding to support the Palestinian people and the development of a Palestinian state.
Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing this debate but ask the Minister when we are going to have a debate on this problem which is not so time limited. I declare an interest as chairman of the board of the Welfare Association UK, which disperses aid programmes in the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza.
I agree with all the recommendations and comments in the report but will concentrate on only one of them. Recommendations 27 and 30 express concern about the lack of adequate audit of the money we give which, among many other things, is used to pay 85,000 civil servants’ salaries and compensates prisoners’ families. I agree with many of the comments that have been made but I particularly refer to a recent report by the Israeli economist Shir Hever, How Much International Aid to Palestinians Ends Up in the Israeli Economy. He calculates that 78% of total aid to the Palestinians ends up in Israel via transport charges, taxes and the monopoly that Israel has to supply any materials or produce needed. For example, how much does the cement to repair the buildings destroyed by Israel cost us? A bit rich, that. The World Bank, too, estimated that in 2013 the Palestinians lost $3.4 billion to Israel.
Can the Minister explain this and make sure that our aid goes directly to the Palestinians and not into the Israeli coffers? Would it not be more efficient and transparent if the bulk of our aid was disbursed via UNRWA, which has much experience and has made huge efficiencies recently? Despite this, it still has an $80 million deficit this year. Please help it. I have no time left now except to say that I have long been concerned that we help fund the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian land, which surely must make us accomplices in breaking international law.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for giving us the opportunity to debate this report. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, spelled out clearly the importance of striving to find a constructive peace agreement rather than rewarding terrorists. I agree—be that anywhere in the world.
The first recommendation of the 2014 report calls for the resumption of peace talks and hails US Secretary of State John Kerry’s,
“leadership in bringing the parties to the table”.
Can the Minister tell the Committee why the Palestinian leadership rejected this peace proposal last week? We all understand that it will be difficult for any deal to satisfy the sensitive nature of the demands of both sides but to reject out of hand another good-faith deal offers little incentive to potential international investors.
Recommendation 27 of the report questions whether DfID is,
“taking adequate measures to prevent its funds from being misused”.
There is talk of building planned communities in Palestine as a viable option for developing the economy. The Israeli Government indicated support for the building of more planned Palestinian cities such as Rawabi, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, and projects such as the Ersal Commercial Center in Ramallah and the Al Jinan neighbourhood in the north of the West Bank. These are tangible initiatives which provide new business premises, jobs and homes for Palestinians facing youth unemployment that is hovering at 40%. My noble friend Lord Cope mentioned music. He is absolutely right, and I commend the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Surely it is through substantive projects such as these that the UK and the international community should be supportive. Has the Minister considered supporting planned communities as an option? Finally, can he confirm that the Palestinian Authority is giving its full backing to planned cities being built for Palestinians?
Lord Gold (Con)
The International Development Select Committee has proposed a number of positive recommendations concerning the UK’s development work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, not least the resumption of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. I am pleased that the committee recognised that Hamas’s charter continues to call for the destruction of Israel and condemned the continuous rocket attacks perpetrated from Gaza.
I, too, recommend and welcome the resumption of peace talks but for such an initiative to be successful some trust must be built up between the parties. As I have said before, in my view the starting point has to be a recognition by Hamas that Israel has the right to exist. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, the majority of Palestinians do not accept the charter, let them come forward and say that. No two-state solution can get off the ground without that.
Secondly, there has to be a stop to the continuing rocket attacks on Israel, which terrorise the civilian population. Unfortunately, since the publication of the committee’s report, the safety position in Israel has worsened, with a new threat of knife attacks, mostly on civilians going about their daily lives. Since September 2015 there have been at least 323 stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. Fortunately, not all have resulted in fatalities but that does not reduce the seriousness of these terrible crimes. No wonder the Israelis fear that peace talks will get nowhere. The stabbings have to stop as well. If the terrorist activity ended, including the building of a new network of tunnels in Gaza, I believe that Israel would be more receptive to easing the travel restrictions and the movement of goods.
I recognise that the peace process has to be a two-way affair. In my view, if both sides genuinely want to achieve peace, Israel for its part must also move its position. The best way of doing that is that, simultaneously with the ending of terrorist acts, Israel should stop the building and expansion of settlements.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I have visited the Middle East—Gaza once; Israel and the West Bank on many occasions—and I have seen for myself what the situation is. The most recent time I visited was last month with various other noble Lords and I understand that we were paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I consider myself a friend of Israel, but a critical friend. In that, I should say that my wife has been stoned by settlers outside Hebron and I have been subjected to appallingly aggressive and intimidating action by border guards. I believe Israel can be both disproportionate in its military reaction and vindictive and punitive to Palestinians. If they treated me badly as a visiting Member of Parliament, I can only imagine how border guards might treat Palestinians.
But it takes two to tango. Having visited the Palestinian Authority only a month ago, I was shocked by the governance—or lack of it—that we saw and heard about. We all know how corrupt the Palestinian Authority has been; the report shows some of that. I am afraid that Hamas is beyond the pale in its actions. We have to consider that the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas must get together as well. We cannot, as many people do, blame Israel alone. Both sides must sit down. We may assist—the Americans above all must assist—but it is foolish for some people in this country to bring out anti-Semitic comments, about which we heard. Indeed, I really regret the way that the Palestinian Authority sponsors and applauds anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic actions in the media.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating the debate. The Opposition remain firmly committed to a two-state solution that recognises the importance of security and stability of any final settlement. As the Government recognise, it is essential that the UK continues to support the talks, to keep the hopes of peace and the two-state solution alive, and to provide funding to support the Palestinians, especially in building the foundations of a sustainable economy.
Because we have so little time, I will focus on recommendations 35 and 36 on support for organisations that can bring together people of all faiths—in part because I am also due to participate in the next debate on religious freedom. In their response to the report, the Government indicated that there had been mixed experience of joint Israeli-Palestinian people-to-people projects in the past, particularly in terms of weak results and scalability. However, one joint project with the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund that Desmond Swayne referred to in an answer to my right honourable friend Joan Ryan was the “Youth Creating Peace On/Line” project, which encourages educational co-operation between Palestinians and Israelis. As we have heard, getting peoples together is not about talks at the top, but about building community relationships, as I learned for many years working in Northern Ireland in the trade union movement. Will the Minister update the Committee on this project and tell us, in line with the response to the committee, whether DfID is considering any other joint projects that meet the operational planning objectives and value for money?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing the debate, and, indeed, all noble Lords for their contributions. I hope noble Lords will understand that my noble friend Lady Verma is in New York speaking at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I am conscious that I come to this hugely important matter without the experience that she would bring to the debate.
The International Development Committee report on the Occupied Palestinian Territories was published in July 2014. The report was followed soon thereafter by a seven-week conflict in Gaza that sadly claimed 2,000 lives. Since then there has been an upsurge in continuing violence across Israel and the OPTs, to which my noble friends Lord Sheikh and Lord Gold referred.
The IDC’s report was, on the whole, supportive of DfID’s support in the OPTs, praising in particular its work in private sector development. DfID officials responded in writing to the IDC’s recommendations and provided a further update in December 2015. The report’s recommendations focused on five key areas: Palestinian-Israeli tensions; Gaza; Israeli accordance with international law; Area C; and DfID’s programmes in the OPTs. I will update your Lordships on these key areas before addressing some of the specific questions raised today.
Since the report was published, we have seen a significant increase in Palestinian-Israeli tensions. We are deeply concerned by the recent violence and terrorist attacks across the OPTs and Israel, as I mentioned. We continue to speak regularly to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government, urging them to use their influence to de-escalate tensions. We condemn all acts of violence and incitement to commit acts of violence, and urge both sides to work together to promote peace.
I was particularly struck by what my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley said about the promotion of culture and music specifically, which my noble friend Lady Rawlings also mentioned. I shall certainly speak to my noble friend Lady Verma about the health initiative, about which my noble friend Lord Polak spoke so powerfully. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, also referred to the importance of community, understanding and working together. Again, these matters can be dealt with at certain levels but it surely must be right that the communities try to work together more closely.
The situation in Gaza, which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised in particular, remains severe following the devastating conflict and continued movement and access restrictions. Indeed, following that conflict in the summer of 2014, the United Kingdom provided more than £17 million in immediate humanitarian assistance to those affected. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to employees of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The UK’s assistance to the Palestinian Authority helps to strengthen the moderate Palestinian leadership. Many of its staff continue to deliver much-needed services to Palestinians living in Gaza. A limited number of employees are unable to work under the de facto authority but we believe it is important that the UK continues to support the work of the Palestinian Authority, which remains a vital element of efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
Through our assistance, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was able to support 12,375 families to repair their homes and to help 1,733 families who were unable to return to their homes find alternative accommodation. DfID’s support also included an additional £3 million to the World Food Programme, enabling it to reach almost 300,000 people. In October 2014, at the Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo, the UK pledged a further £20 million in early recovery assistance, including cash assistance to Palestinian refugees, mine removal and medical treatment. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton referred to medical treatment, which has obviously been so important. As part of this pledge, the UK provided £700,000 to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, which is facilitating the import of construction materials into Gaza. We are pleased that more than 130,000 people are participating in the GRM and 70,000 have completed repairs. The UK disbursed our Cairo pledge in its entirety and has since provided more than £25 million of additional support to Gaza, including for basic service delivery and support to the private sector.
The UK consistently calls on Israel to improve movement and access into and out of Gaza, which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised. We need to see a sustainable political solution for Gaza that will address Israel’s legitimate security concerns while opening up movement and access, and supporting the return of the Palestinian Authority.
On DfID’s funding of health systems, medical supplies and support for some NGOs—the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, also raised this matter—the UK remains the third largest donor to UNRWA’s core programme budget. This provides basic healthcare to Palestinian refugees across the region, including 70% of the Gazan population who are Palestinian refugees. The UK provides support for the Palestinian Authority to provide basic healthcare services. During the 2014 Gaza crisis, DfID provided an additional £2 million to support health-related activities through a number of NGOs, including Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The IDC report rightly raised concerns over Israeli accordance with international law. We repeatedly call on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law and have regular dialogue with Israel on legal issues relating to the occupation, settlements, demolitions and the treatment of Palestinian children in military custody. The UK Government’s policy on settlements remains clear: they are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and take us further away from a two-state solution. We strongly urge the Government of Israel to reverse their policy on illegal settlements.
Recent reports of a large increase in demolitions of Palestinian structures since the start of 2016 are extremely concerning. This was raised particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. Demolitions cause unnecessary suffering to Palestinians, are harmful to the peace process and, in all but the most limited circumstances, are contrary to international humanitarian law. Our embassy in Tel Aviv raised our concerns about demolitions with Israeli authorities and will continue to raise this at the political level.
The IDC report contained several recommendations for DfID to scale up its work in Area C of the West Bank. The UK is fully aware of the critical importance of supporting Palestinian presence and development in Area C in preserving the viability of the two-state solution. We want to see sustainable development in Area C and better co-operation between the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel. DfID supports access to water for agriculture, the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure in Area C and legal assistance to Palestinian communities at risk of forced eviction, demolition and displacement. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, mentioned this but through our Palestinian market development programme we support Palestinian businesses in Area C to improve their products and enter markets. That will clearly be important as we ensure that the economy and people working in business are able to prosper.
We continue to urge the Government of Israel to develop improved mechanisms for zoning, planning and permitting in Area C for the benefit of the Palestinian population. In 2015-16, we provided £500,000 to UN-Habitat to support the development of Palestinian outline plans in Area C to meet the requirements of the Israeli planning system. We are joining the EU’s programme in Area C to support construction of small-scale infrastructure. DfID provided more than £349 million in support for Palestinian development between 2011 and 2015, and will provide a further £72 million in the financial year 2015-16.
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a UK priority. The UK Government have officials here in London, the British consulate-general Jerusalem and the British embassy in Tel Aviv working extremely hard towards this objective in an increasingly fragile context. As part of its bilateral aid review, DfID is in the process of agreeing future multi-year support for Palestinian development and will continue to consider carefully the IDC’s recommendations, in addition to consultations already under way with other donors, partners, civil society and the Palestinian Authority.
A number of questions were raised about misuse of funds. I will endeavour to answer as many questions as I can in the time but assure your Lordships that if anything is not followed up I will ensure that my noble friend Lady Verma does so. On the misuse of funds—which is very important and was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, and my noble friend Lady Rawlings—the UK closely monitors its spending in the OPT. Safeguards ensure compliance with UK and EU legislation, particularly on terror financing.
On prisoner payments, to which my noble friend Lord Popat and the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, also referred, DfID’s direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority is used to pay the salaries of that authority’s civil servants only and the process is subject to independent auditing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, mentioned people-to-people projects, which again are all important. Through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund the UK supports an NGO, Kids Creating Peace, to bring young Israelis and Palestinians together through workshops with the objective of transforming their perceptions. I very much hope that, across the piece, there will be scope for many more of these sorts of project with other donors as well as with us.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned land registration. DfID continues to be part of the collective donor effort to support Palestinian authorities on this matter. On support for planning, and in reply to my noble friend Lady Rawlings, I already said that we provided £500,000 to support the development of outlined Palestinian plans so that these can meet the requirements of the planning system. On the matter of labelling, the UK Government welcome the EU-wide interpretation notice on the indication of the origin of products from the Israeli settlements.
I am conscious of time, though I am not quite at 5 pm. To end, UK aid seeks to make a positive difference to the lives of Palestinians—an aim in which we all share. A negotiated two-state solution remains the only way to resolve the conflict and achieve a sustainable peace so that Israelis and Palestinians can live without fear of violence. We call on all sides to work urgently to improve the situation on the ground and pave the way for a resumption of peace talks. We can seek to do all that we can but in the final analysis the quest for a sustainable peace can be realised only with Israelis and Palestinians working together. As I said, I will make sure that my noble friend Lady Verma has a full record of this debate and I am most grateful to your Lordships for this opportunity.
India: Freedom of Religion
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, relating to freedom of religion, is being upheld in India.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to highlight concerns over the plight of minority faiths in India. Narendra Modi, leader of the nationalist BJP, won a landslide victory in the May 2015 Indian election, mainly on ostensibly economic issues, but after his election he has given increasing support to the Hindu extremist agenda of those who helped propel him to power. He refers increasingly to restoring dignity and power to the Hindu community. His own credentials were questioned by many in India and abroad. As Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, he failed to stop widespread violence against the Muslim community and for some years was banned from entering the UK or the USA.
Narendra Modi’s election was seen, sadly, as a green light by some Hindu extremists to make India more Hindu and to put India’s large Muslim minority, as well as Christians and Sikhs, firmly in their place. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and other human rights organisations all tell the same story of forced conversions of Muslims and Christians, with brutal rape and killing and the destruction or seizure of property. This has been paralleled, sadly, by a more general crackdown on the right to free speech.
I do not want to take up too much time reciting detailed examples of an increasing disregard of Article 18 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of these are detailed in the excellent briefing notes prepared by the Library. I will give just a few examples to explain the fear now felt, particularly by Christians and Muslims in India. The highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed concern in its 2015 report over the biased application of state anti-discrimination conversion laws, under which Christian preachers have been harassed and arrested, while no action has been taken against those who, by inducement or otherwise, force people to convert to Hinduism. Its report also drew attention to the increasing harassment of Muslims and Christians, particularly those who have converted to Christianity, with physical violence, arson and the desecration of churches and bibles. Although this highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom is allowed to function in countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, it is now banned from entering India.
Muslims in particular are targets of Hindu extremists and are routinely accused of spying for Pakistan, of being terrorists, of forcibly kidnapping and marrying Hindu women and of slaughtering cows. Muslim villages in remote areas, particularly in Bihar, are routinely attacked. Sadly, the police, as with the mass killing of Sikhs in 1984, are either silent spectators or active participants. Discrimination against religious minorities was prevalent, as Sikhs know too well, under successive Congress Governments. Under the BJP Government of Narendra Modi the increasing attacks on minority faiths have become more blatant and are accompanied by a disturbing silence of those in power.
Under Congress, discrimination against Sikhs was direct and brutal. In the run-up to the election that put him in power, Narendra Modi himself pointed out that the Congress Government were responsible for the mass killing of thousands of Sikh men, women, children and infants in 1984. A leaked American embassy document from 1984 revealed that more Sikhs were killed in just three days than the number of people killed in the 13 years of General Pinochet’s despotic rule in Chile. More recently, Prime Minister David Cameron described the organised killing of Sikhs as,
“a stain on the post-independence history of India”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/14; col. 348.]
Today, the pressure on Sikhs is more subtle but perhaps even more serious. It is nothing less than an attempt to dilute Sikh identity and absorb the community into the Hindu fold. Independent and forward-looking Sikh teachings on human rights and respect for other faiths were described by the writer George Bruce as a bridge between Hinduism and the Abrahamic faiths.
In India, a continuing attempt to erode Sikh identity began with the writing of India’s constitution in which Sikhs are—without their consent—described as a subset of Hinduism. There are other ways in which independent Sikh identity is under constant attack. In India today, people with Sikh names are increasingly shown in Bollywood films and TV soaps as villains wearing the distinctive Sikh kara—a bracelet of commitment to Sikh ideals. Sikhs are also frequently shown participating in Hindu religious ceremonies involving idol worship, contrary to Sikh teachings. In many ways, this subtle erosion of Sikh identity is more dangerous than the direct discrimination of Congress Governments.
Governments with large majorities have a tendency to develop a degree of arrogance that is dismissive of the views and concerns of others. This has become a real concern in India, with the Government becoming less tolerant of dissent of any sort. This was illustrated by government reaction to students at a New Delhi university who were stopped from demonstrating against the imposition of the death penalty on a Muslim convicted of terrorism. The Union Home Minister’s intolerance of dissent was evident in his comment that:
“If anyone shouts anti-India slogan and challenges nation’s sovereignty and integrity while living in India, they will not be tolerated or spared”.
He added, “I have instructed”—the police—
“to take strong action against the anti-India elements”.
The growing assault on freedom of speech has alarmed many in India from all walks of life. Recently, a number of prominent Indians honoured for their work in arts, science and business returned their awards as a protest against curbs on free speech.
Despite my concerns, I believe that India is a wonderful country that has a lot going for it. It is a country rich in talent with a vast pool of highly educated and qualified people in business, science and the arts. But to achieve its real potential, those in positions of authority should heed the words of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who declared that the care of minorities was more than a duty, it was a sacred trust. India has a lofty constitution with grandiose pledges of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a country that is home to many different faiths, but it cannot fulfil its full potential unless it takes its religious minorities with it. Sadly, there is no sign of this happening. What can, or should, Britain do about the deteriorating attitude to human rights and religious freedom in India?
Recent pronouncements by UK Ministers on human rights are not encouraging. To my disbelief, the government Minister Michael Fallon, in the context of trade with China, actually declared that we should put human rights to one side when discussing trade. Our country rightly pushed for an international, independent inquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, a small trading country, but when I asked if the Government would press for a similar inquiry into the mass killing of Sikhs in India, a larger trading partner, I received the brusque reply that it was a matter for the Indian Government.
I have, as the Minister knows, asked the same question on half a dozen occasions, and got the same unhelpful response. Do the Government agree with the words of the great human rights activist, Dr Andrei Sakharov, that there can be no real peace in the world unless we are even-handed in our attitude to human rights? Britain has led the world in many enlightened ways. Today I appeal to our Government to move from the usual anodyne comment that we take human rights very seriously and be true to Dr Sakharov’s noble sentiment in giving a more robust condemnation to attacks on freedom of worship and human rights abuse, regardless of the country in which it occurs.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for securing today’s important debate. I declare an interest as a director of the Commonwealth Initiative for Freedom of Religion or Belief at the University of Birmingham, which works with Commonwealth parliamentarians to promote this vital freedom.
Most religions or beliefs of the Commonwealth are present in vast numbers in India. It has the potential to be a beacon within the Commonwealth, and across the world, for religious diversity and freedom. The predominant religion of the Commonwealth is Hinduism, a fact which derives directly from India’s membership. The Commonwealth’s second most widespread religion, Islam, is also well represented in India with 172 million people—the world’s third largest Muslim population. By 2050 India is predicted to have the largest Muslim population in the world. India currently has the world’s largest populations of Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians, as well as substantial numbers of Christians and Buddhists and people of no religion at all. India has more people who are not Hindus—a quarter of a billion—than most countries have people. India’s religious diversity has always been part of its national identity and history.
The third century BCE Buddhist king Ashoka, who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, is remembered for his edicts that did not seek to impose his Buddhist religion, but instead emphasised religious tolerance. Ashoka’s “Lion Capital”, with its four lions sitting back to back, is the state emblem of modern India. It is easy to trace the tolerant ideals of Ashoka to the secular ones of Gandhi, Nehru and the drafters of the modern Indian constitution. As Gandhi said:
“Free India will be no Hindu raj, it will be Indian raj based not on the majority of any religious sect or community but on the representatives of the whole people without distinction of religion”.
Articles 25 and 15 of the Indian constitution prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion and give the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. These articles reflect Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. India played a key role in drafting the universal declaration and is a party to the core international human rights conventions. India plays a vital role in promoting human rights across the Commonwealth, not least in its membership of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.
This is not to pretend that religious tensions and violence do not exist in India today: there have been well-publicised incidents of religiously motivated violence and communal attacks. In January 2015 more than 5,000 people attacked the Muslim-majority village Azizpur in Bihar, setting 25 houses on fire and burning three Muslims alive, following the murder of a young Hindu man. Catholic communities have documented a number of serious incidents, including an arson attack on St Sebastian Catholic church in Delhi, Christmas carollers in Hyderabad being beaten badly by a mob, and a Catholic shopkeeper in Delhi being brutally attacked for displaying images of Jesus in the window of his store. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Singh, in his opening speech, about threats to the religious freedom of Indian Sikhs. However, India possesses the institutional resources to deal with such matters and must do so swiftly.
Article 18 explicitly states that freedom of religion or belief includes the freedom of everyone,
“to change his religion or belief”
It is concerning that a number of state governments in India seek to enforce anti-conversion laws. As the noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned, coerced conversions or reconversions—of which there have been a number of allegations—are incompatible with Article 18, but so is a refusal to recognise a freely chosen conversion to one religion from another. It is extremely encouraging, however, that the new High Commissioner, His Excellency Mr Navtej Sarna, is the first Sikh to hold such a post. I would be grateful if the Minister would consider discussions on Article 18 with His Excellency and others from among the 1.5 million members of the British Indian diaspora who are concerned about the future of India.
India looks like being one of the 21st century’s success stories, with the fastest-growing large economy in the world, which is lifting millions of people out of poverty. Yet if it is to continue it must ensure that all of its citizens, from any and every religion and from no religion, have a stake in its prosperity. This requires upholding Article 18 and celebrating the religious pluralism and diversity that has characterised India throughout its history.
Lord Hussain (LD)
My Lords, India is the largest democracy, has a strong civil society, rigorous media and an independent judiciary, but also serious human rights concerns. I was reading the Human Rights Watch report 2016, which states that the Government did little in 2015 to implement promises by the newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to improve respect for religious freedom, to protect the rights of women and children and to end abuse against marginalised communities. Even as the Prime Minister celebrated Indian democracy abroad, back home civil society groups faced increased harassment and government critics faced intimidation and law suits. Officials warned the media against making what they called unsubstantiated allegations against the Government, saying that it weakened democracy. In several cases, courts reprimanded the Government for restricting free expression. According to the report, religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, accused the authorities of not doing enough to protect their rights. Some leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party made inflammatory remarks against minorities, and right-wing Hindu fringe groups threatened and harassed them and in some cases even attacked them.
It has been widely reported throughout the past many years that Hindu extremism in India is growing and the human rights and freedoms of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits are hugely being victimised through its activities and attacks. I read two news articles in the past two days relating to India; one of them stated that four Kashmiri Muslim students were attacked and charged for eating beef in Rajasthan. That is the kind of environment that people are having to live in. For eating something they like, they are not only attacked and beaten up but then charged. At the same time, I read that an American watchdog had been refused a visa to look into the freedoms and rights of religious communities in India. That shows the intention of the Indian Government. If they have nothing to hide, why would they not allow such independent organisations to look at what kind of religious freedom people are enjoying? India claims all the time that people from every religion come to live in peace in India and enjoy themselves. However, you only have to be either a Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh or a Dalit to find that out for yourself.
In particular, Muslims, who form the largest minority in India, are facing enormous pressure because of various laws. For example, Kashmir is the only Muslim majority state in India, where, as we all know, Indian forces have been since 1947. However, since 1990, they have continuously enjoyed immunity via the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, through which they are being given licence to kill. I bring this up in the debate on religious minorities’ rights because 99.9% of the victims suffering at the hands of the armed forces with immunity under that Act are Muslims. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the last 20 years by the armed forces. I know that there have been reports lately that some soldiers have been charged for wrongdoings in Kashmir, but that is only a token prosecution. When the Foreign Secretary next sees his counterpart in India, will he raise the issue of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the immunity given to its forces in Kashmir? When will India take that away from them? When will it take the army back out of the cities and heavily populated areas?
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, I have the greatest possible respect for the sheer resilience and joy of the Indian people, and the fact that the country sustains such a vast and complex democracy. However, at the moment—as the noble Lord, Lord Singh, so eloquently argued—there are some real worries about the observance of basic human rights, especially the right to practise one’s religion.
On paper, India has an excellent secular constitution. As Amartya Sen has argued, “secular” here does not mean the banishment of religion from public life but the fact that all religions are treated, in theory, with equal respect and concern by the state and its institutions. However, in practice, because of certain Hindu extremist groups, there is sustained violence against Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Human rights are indivisible, and my concern is with the freedom of all religions in India—Muslims and Sikhs as much as Christians, although I wish to focus on Christians for a few moments.
A new report from the Evangelical Fellowship of India documented 177 recorded attacks on Christians last year. Church services were stormed and Christian leaders harassed and assaulted. There were beatings and violence, including the rape of a 71 year-old nun. There were even reports of 18 church pastors being arrested. This, the report stressed, is a drop in the ocean because most cases are simply not recorded by the police or local government. These attacks on Christianity must also be understood in relation to the caste system, because many Christians are Dalits—the former untouchables. As is well known, Dalits suffer disproportionately by every possible criteria: the number of rapes, lack of clean water and sanitation, poverty, and inability to obtain justice from the police and judiciary. It should also be noted that Christian Dalits do not qualify for the positive discrimination measures that other Dalits enjoy, so they suffer twice—both as Dalits and as Christian Dalits. A full list of these gross injustices is being set out this month at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Not surprisingly, a good number of Dalit Hindus in the past sought to convert to Christianity or Buddhism. However, it should be noted—to the shame of the church—that caste has now also heavily infiltrated the church. The point here is that Christians are the object of attack by Hindu extremist groups, because these groups believe that they seek to attract converts from Hinduism by the promise of escape from the caste system. Whether this is true or not, it is very difficult for people to convert should they want to because of the threat of violence. Yet freedom to convert from one religion to another is fundamental to Article 18.
Mr Modi, in his younger days, was a member of the RSS, the main Hindu extremist group. He has not disowned that past, nor, as far as I am aware has there been a ringing condemnation of Hindu-inflicted violence against other religions. At the moment, there seems to be a culture of impunity, which can only poison the atmosphere further and lead to an increased number of attacks. Will the Minister, in our dealings with the Indian Government, call on Mr Modi to be clear, forceful and unequivocal in condemning these Hindu extremist groups, and firm in ensuring that perpetrators of religious violence are brought to justice? On too many occasions, there has been little or no action against criminals when the victims have been Christian Dalits or simply Christians.
There is one final aspect of this I wish to mention. I learn from people who know India well that NGOs are now being intimidated and are fearful of speaking out on this and other issues. Personnel who have links with foreign countries are having difficulty getting their visas renewed. In short, there is a growing climate of fear in which free speech is muffled and silenced. I hope that our Government will make it quite clear to the Indian Government that this is totally unacceptable.
Lord Sheikh (Con)
My Lords, I was born and raised in east Africa, but my father originated from the Punjab region of India. I am proud of my Indian roots. I have traced my family history back to 1812 and found out that one of my forefathers was a Minister in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Government. I have just finished a book on the life of the Maharaja that will be published shortly. I mention this for a reason, as the Maharaja treated all his subjects equally and, irrespective of their racial or religious beliefs, they were treated very well. India has one of the oldest civilisations in the world and throughout its long history there has been an influx of different classes of people. As a result, India is a rich and diverse nation.
When India attained its independence, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad and other leaders made it very clear that India would be a secular state. As a Muslim, I would like to say that Maulana Azad was a man of vision and a very able First Minister of Education when India gained its independence. India is home to 1.3 billion people, who belong to all the major religions of the world. More than 780 languages are spoken there. We must recognise and appreciate the institutions that have developed within the country to support the rights of all citizens. It must be remembered that India has no state religion and that the state does not discriminate between religions. Additionally, the state cannot impose any tax to promote a religion or to maintain a religious institution.
The Indian constitution ensures that every citizen of India has the freedom to profess, practise and propagate his own religion. Therefore, citizens can follow their own religions and beliefs. We should all remember that India took an active role and was originally instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we are discussing here today. India is fully committed to the rights laid out in the universal declaration, being a party to the six core human rights conventions. In India, every citizen has a right to invoke the highest court of the land directly where violation of fundamental rights is concerned, under Article 32 of the constitution. Furthermore, discrimination in public employment on grounds of religion is prohibited under the constitution.
India has its own National Commission for Minorities, which is mandated to recommend effective implementation to protect the interests of minorities by the central and state Governments. Since 1993, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians have been noted as minority communities. I stand here as a Muslim of Indian origin. Approximately 15% of the country is Muslim, totalling about 180 million people. I stress that recent terrorist attacks that have taken place within India, such as the Mumbai attacks, were not perpetrated by Indian Muslims.
Yesterday, I attended a function at the residence of his Excellency, the High Commissioner for India, to celebrate the presentation of his credentials to Her Majesty the Queen. The present High Commissioner of India, his Excellency Mr Navtej Sarna, is a Sikh. In a country such as India, it must be appreciated that in recent years there was at one time an Italian lady who was leader of the Congress Party, a Sikh Prime Minister, a Muslim President and a Hindu Vice-President. We must all appreciate that anyone can reach the top in India irrespective of their religious beliefs. However, we must also accept that there have been some aberrations on human rights, which we all abhor. I am sure that, with the will of the majority of Indians and the Government, these undesirable blips will be ironed out. I am confident of this. India is a great country and I am sure that it will overcome the occasional prejudicial and undesirable practices.
Lord Ahmed (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for securing this debate and providing us with the opportunity of discussing this alarming situation in the so-called largest democracy in the world. Democracy without human rights, equality, fairness, rule of law and minority rights does not impress me. President Putin was democratically elected; Donald Trump is leading the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination in the US; Hitler was also democratically elected; and so were many others in history who had a terrible record in the treatment of religious minorities. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, with all due respect, that I disagree with him: India’s record on the treatment of religious minorities has been problematic for decades.
We are seeing, as many had predicted, disturbing new levels of threat emerging since the formation of the openly Hindu nationalist BJP Government led by Prime Minister Modi. There are almost daily reports of attacks, intimidation and marginalisation of religious minorities. In 2015, President Obama identified the risk of religious intolerance as a possible cause of India failing as a state. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned the tens of thousands of victims of mass violence, against Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, where mobs widely believed to have official backing massacred, raped and looted with impunity.
In the past year Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made numerous international trips in the hope of boosting trade and India’s engagement in global affairs. However, this did not go as planned as India continued to vote poorly when it came to human rights issues at the United Nations. I accept India being involved with the UN declaration, but India abstained from the Human Rights Council’s resolution on Syria, North Korea and Ukraine and voted against resolutions on Iran and Belarus. India’s long-term determination to play a larger role in global affairs and Prime Minister Modi’s aspirations have been shot down because of India’s weak record on human rights, both at home and abroad.
Christian communities in India have faced discrimination, as we have heard, and religious violence over a period of time. For example, on 17 June 2014 in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, over 50 village councils adopted a resolution which banned all non-Hindu religious propaganda, prayers and speeches. In those communities this effectively criminalised the practice of Christianity for approximately 300 Christian families in the region. Many were also injured in the violence following that. Numerous incidents of violence have recently taken place in India over the consumption of beef, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, and many have been killed.
Lack of recognition of Sikhism as a distinct religion has gone on for too long. Article 25 of India’s constitution deems them to be Hindus for the purposes of religion and personal law. Sikhs’ efforts to amend that incredible, offensive and divisive article have been thwarted for decades. This has resulted in the prevention of members of the Sikh communities from accessing employment, social services and education, preferences available to other religious communities.
Sikh community members are reportedly harassed and pressured to reject religious practices and beliefs distinct to Sikhism. In October 2015, security forces in Punjab killed two Sikhs and injured scores more who were protesting peacefully against the desecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, which is the holy Sikh scripture. No action has been taken against those who committed this sacrilege or the security personnel who killed those innocent Sikhs.
The Indian Government have recently refused visas to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom; this denial of impartial international access proves that there is still a veil that the Government of India and Mr Modi do not want the world to lift. I think it is clear that India has been and remains in breach of its duty towards minority religions. Prime Minister Modi and his allies in hard-line Hindu groups, such as Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, present a challenge to the international community. Do we confront this overt threat to tens of millions of Christians, Muslims and Sikhs in India, or do we appease these extremist forces in the name of trade and profit? I urge the UK Government to make wiser choices and tailor their India policy towards the protection of internationally accepted religious freedoms. Backing India’s claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, for example, is folly under present circumstances. Surely we should demand compliance with international law as a bare minimum price for such a prize.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for initiating this debate. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, outlined, India is a secular nation. India has a long and rich history of religious tolerance and its secularism is enshrined in its constitution. For millennia, India has been home to vast diversities, cultures and traditions. In the rich tapestry of Indian society, we see 780 languages and seven major religions. India’s commitment to the rule of law, democracy and human rights is as old as the nation itself.
Yet India also has a depressingly long list of incidents in which religious tensions have risen. Today’s debate could realistically have happened at any point in the past few decades and still reached worrying conclusions. While India’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths, it so often leads to moments of weakness. We should not pretend that religious tensions in India have come to the fore only recently, or under the BJP. Some, if not most, of the worst riots, including the Sikh massacre of 1984, which the noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned, were committed under the regime of the Congress Party.
“My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence. My government will not allow any religious group, belonging to the majority or the minority, to incite hatred against others, overtly or covertly”.
Those were the words of Prime Minister Modi last year at an event honouring Catholic saints. A lot of what precedes this debate is a suspicion, held by some, that Prime Minister Modi may not be sound, that his past associations hint at a darker character. This suspicion has existed since before he was elected Prime Minister, often by the people who did not see eye to eye with him politically. Yet Modi could not have been clearer about where he stands. It is worth reminding ourselves that, when he was elected in 2014, he received considerable support from religious minority communities across India, including Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir, because of his vision for India: to develop the nation economically, to build a cleaner India, and to help India emerge on the global scene.
In a young nation of 1.3 billion people, tensions will always arise. The best way in the long run for those tensions to be negated is to ensure that every person in India has access to a good education, that there are jobs for all people and that prosperity is available to all. Last year, for the first time since 1999, India overtook China on economic growth, helped by a reorientation of government spending towards needed public infrastructure, which helps all citizens. In the same way, we should condemn any acts of religious intolerance. As a Hindu, I absolutely condemn illegal actions taken in the name of my faith. We should also praise the Indian Government for the work they are doing to build a better India for all.
As an aside, we in Britain have to be very careful about how we, and other foreign nations, approach this topic. It is also not uncommon for us to have our own religiously motivated problems in the western world. We should also not lose sight of how these incidents are so often restricted to very small percentages of the population; nor should we forget India’s strong record of protecting small minority communities, such as the Jews and the Parsis. We must not be intolerant of the tolerance demonstrated by so many.
India is, relatively speaking, still a young nation, which is taking great strides to become an economically and socially developed nation welcome to all. I believe that, rather than see the glass as half-empty and focus only on the negatives, we must acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of good happening in India, a lot of which is being led by the Indian Government. I believe Britain should be India’s—and Prime Minister Modi’s—partner. In the short term, we should take Modi at his word and support him in the desire to clamp down on religious intolerance, but we should also support him in the wider vision to build a prosperous and developed India.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for initiating this important debate. Countries that do not respect religious freedom invariably do not respect other basic human rights. Last weekend I listened to BBC Radio 4’s “Sunday” programme—I am a regular listener despite being a humanist—during which a representative from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom was interviewed about being denied the opportunity to visit India to examine reports of religious discrimination and abuse.
In the commission’s recent annual report, it was suggested that incidents of religiously motivated and communal violence in India had increased for three consecutive years. NGOs and religious leaders, including leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase to religiously divisive campaigning in advance of the country’s general election.
However, as we have heard, despite election promises, Prime Minister Modi appears to have done little since the election to improve respect for religious freedom. As the noble Lord, Lord Singh, highlighted, religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling BJP and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions.
The UK Government have placed a considerable importance on Prime Minister Modi’s promise of economic reform within India, but will the Minister say what representations have been made on the reportedly increasing levels of censorship in India? Has the High Commission in New Delhi paid any attention to human rights within India, especially with regard to freedom of speech and what media outlets in India claim are rising levels of state-backed attempts to curb dissent?
It is a regret that the penal codes legislated during British colonial rule still govern important parts of Indian life. One that I have raised in previous debates is Section 377, which criminalises homosexuality. Happily, India’s Supreme Court agreed last month to reconsider its stance on this. Another section, often overlooked and loosely defined, is Section 295A, under which a person can be threatened with a jail sentence for hurting the religious sentiments of another, however personal and bizarrely delicate that portrayed sentiment might be.
As we have heard in this debate, the Indian constitution does not have any such imposition. This was confirmed in a 2014 judgment by the Supreme Court, which gave priority to the fundamental right of the people to express themselves as enshrined in the constitution. Again, as we have heard, some states still rely on that colonial penal code to impose penalties on religious minorities. Bearing in mind Britain’s responsibility for these laws, can I ask the Minister whether the Government have any plan to support and encourage training on human rights and religious freedom for the police and for the judiciary in India? Do the Government ensure that the issue of religious freedom is integrated into regular dialogue between India and the UK?
Once again, as we have heard, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seems focused on what it called prosperity interventions in India, but what is being done on human rights since Prime Minister Modi came to power? The prosperity agenda and the lives and fundamental freedoms of people must never be part of a cynical trade-off. You cannot trade human rights with economic trade.
I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, on religious freedom in the Commonwealth. At last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting the Commonwealth reaffirmed its commitment to promoting and protecting all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to support the empowerment of women and girls. The leaders’ statement recognised the economic potential that can be unlocked by tackling discrimination and exclusion. What steps have the Government taken to raise with the Indian authorities the concerns highlighted in today’s debate about holding to the ideals of the Commonwealth, which, as we have heard, they were instrumental in setting? Despite the importance of the relationship with India, which I strongly respect, we must not shirk from raising human-rights issues if the country fails to adhere to domestic and international law.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for his thought-provoking question and for the debate this evening.
The noble Lord’s commitment to building inter- faith understanding reflects a key part of the deep ties between the United Kingdom and India. As other noble Lords remind us, these are the world’s biggest and the world’s oldest democracies, reinforcing their co-operation based on common traditions of tolerance and diversity. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, is a representative of a community that embodies the best of both countries, one that has made an impact in business, the professions and government, and which has much to teach the rest of us about our service and social obligations to help others. All noble Lords emphasised the point of wishing that this debate was drawn to the attention of a wider audience in the department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I will ensure that it is made available to the relevant Minister in the department.
The noble Lord’s Question asked about the extent to which freedom of religious expression is being upheld. Article 25 of India’s constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion. Last November, when they discussed the importance of fostering tolerance, Prime Minister Modi reassured my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that he governed for all Indians. At their joint press conference, Mr Modi made a point of saying that he upheld India’s traditions of tolerance and freedom. He repeated this message in his address to Parliament, which some noble Lords were able to attend.
We must, therefore, take note of the passionate views held on this subject, not least those of the 1.5 million British citizens of Indian origin. We all deplore—as have many in India—the desecration of the sacred text of any religion and acts of violence against any human being on grounds of their faith. It is also natural that many will have worried about the effect on their own families of recent events in Haryana, Punjab and at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Many—again both here and in India—are rightly horrified at the crimes inflicted upon innocent women and girls going about their daily lives.
Let us also remember that India provides great examples of tolerance and a celebration of diversity. The Indian Government are acutely aware of the challenges they face, as was noted by my noble friend Lord Popat. We should acknowledge their efforts to address violence against women and girls and their reaffirmation of religious freedoms, while encouraging further steps.
India is not short of robust independent institutions. Many have rightly praised the freedoms and safeguards set out in India’s constitution. The police and judiciary in India are independent and they do investigate abuses. The courts have upheld complaints by NGOs against the Executive. India’s Electoral Commission has successfully upheld the fundamental rights of the world’s largest electorate for nearly seven decades. Recent state election results are a reminder that political pluralism is still very much alive. India’s vibrant media help to maintain accountability and ensure that concerns and abuses are reported in India and beyond. Social media have given millions of Indians a voice. They are increasingly important tools for maintaining freedom of expression and preserving the right to critical debate, which is such a rich part of India’s culture.
The United Kingdom’s relationship with India is deep and wide-ranging. It is right that we seek to strengthen that relationship further. This is why we invited Prime Minister Modi to visit the United Kingdom last autumn. We see India as a key partner in many areas. We face common challenges in combating terrorism and countering violent extremism—India’s people and Government have been the victims of some of the most notorious terrorist acts. Our defence ties are mutually beneficial and growing. There is no denying that trade and investment are important too. The United Kingdom is the largest G20 investor in India, helping to create jobs for the estimated 1 million young Indians entering India’s job market every month. Indian companies invest more in the United Kingdom than in the rest of the European Union put together; the largest private sector employer in this country is an Indian company.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, and other noble Lords drew attention to our own human rights policy. Much has been made of the perceived changes in British foreign policy, of a greater emphasis on trade and investment supposedly at the expense of upholding human rights. It is simply not true, either globally or within our relationships with India. I have referred to this on many occasions in the Chamber at the Dispatch Box. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary noted in the Independent last December:
“Quiet and continued engagement behind the scenes, nurturing a relationship and not being afraid to raise testing issues in private can sometimes achieve surprising results”.
Lecturing people in public does not always work and can sometimes prove counterproductive.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, drew attention to Kashmir, as did other noble Lords. We recognise that there are human rights concerns in Kashmir. Any allegations of human rights abuses should be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently. We are also aware that in Indian-administered Kashmir the Public Safety Act and the Armed Forces Act provide for detention and house arrest without trial for up to two years. We are also aware of the concerns regarding allegations of immunity from prosecution for Indian Armed Forces personnel in Indian-administered Kashmir. There is also a mechanism which allows people to request that the Government of India investigate such concerns. We expect all states to ensure that their domestic laws are in line with international standards. Any allegations of human rights abuses must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently.
The noble Lord, Lord Singh, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lady Berridge drew attention to both attacks on Christians and human rights violations on Muslims. As I have said before, India’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion and belief. The attacks on churches in Delhi in 2015 have been investigated by Indian authorities. After the arson attacks, Prime Minister Modi stressed support for Article 25 of India’s constitution safeguarding freedom of expression.
As for the human rights attacks on Muslims recounted by the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, the United Kingdom engages on human rights matters with India, including religious freedom, both bilaterally and through EU-India human rights dialogue. The Indian authorities have investigated the murder of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly eating beef in October 2015, and I understand that a number of arrests have been made.
The noble Lords, Lord Hussain and Lord Collins, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, also drew attention to NGOs. We are aware of the concerns that some Indian and international NGOs have about the use of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act by the Indian Government and are monitoring the situation closely. Greenpeace India has successfully challenged action taken against them under the FCRA in the Indian courts. This is the best way to address their concerns.
Returning to the issue of Kashmir, a number of noble Lords commented on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. We are aware of those concerns and, as I said before, they were raised in the EU-India human rights dialogue.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and others mentioned the harassment of civil society. The courts have upheld cases brought by NGOs against government, and it is important to remember India’s independent judiciary and free press, as I mentioned before.
The relationship between the United Kingdom and India is a partnership of equals. As I emphasised earlier, I will ensure that I pass on the comments made by noble Lords to my colleagues in the Foreign Office. The ties between our Governments, our Parliaments and our people are rich and wide-ranging. These ties between the oldest and largest democracies are the best way in which to help each other reinforce the common values that bind us together.
House of Lords
Employment: Job Creation
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many net additional jobs have been created in the United Kingdom since 2010, and what assessment they have made, if any, of how that figure compares to those of the 19 nations of the Eurozone.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
Since 2010, employment in the UK has risen by more than 2.3 million people. Comparable international figures for this period are not available, but over the last year the UK has seen the second largest rise in employment in the whole of the EU, after Spain.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
I thank my noble friend. Youth worklessness is still too high in this country. Will my noble friend tell us what the Government are doing to tackle it?
Lord Freud
We have had youth obligation programmes and we seem to have turned the corner here. The figure that I have consistently given to this House over the past nearly six years has concentrated on the workless number—those unemployed or inactive in the 16 to 24 age group. In recent months that figure has been at an all-time low. It is 14.3% of the population and has come down to just a shade over 1 million. It is very interesting that even through the boom years the figure was going up. There was a structural issue. We seem now to be getting at the roots of that structural problem and are beginning to see the figure come down, as I said, to an all-time low in recent months.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
Does the Minister recall, as I do, the dire consequences that were predicted by so many businesspeople, economists and politicians were we not to join the eurozone? In view of those predictions having been so spectacularly wrong, has the Minister heard any apologies from those people?
Lord Freud
It is not often that I warmly endorse the previous Prime Minister or Chancellor in the shape of Gordon Brown, but he seems to have done one signal service to the country in keeping us out of what has clearly been a major mistake by the European Union.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the rise in employment but I want to ask about the disability employment gap. I was pretty shocked on reading the Red Book to discover that the single biggest revenue raiser was the new decision by the Government to save £4.4 billion over five years by taking personal independence payments away from hundreds of thousands of people who need aids to get dressed or manage incontinence. That is on top of previous PIP cuts, lost Motability cars and ESA cuts. How will that help disabled people into work?
Lord Freud
There is a huge misapprehension about the cost of PIP, which has been going up rather than down. These are not cuts: on the present trajectory the figure is moving up to £12 billion, and when we discussed it during the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill there was an expectation that in the key 2019-20 year it would be £9 billion. We are reducing a rapid growth and adjusting how to get PIP because clearly we are getting much higher figures than originally expected through the use of those aids and appliance measurements.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
Does my noble friend accept that, contrary to what the noble Lord opposite said, it was not Prime Minister Gordon Brown who kept us out of the single currency but Prime Minister John Major? Gordon Brown simply stuck wisely to that Conservative decision.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
As the Minister said, we do not have precise international comparisons on job creation, but we are doing okay on the number of jobs. However, is not productivity also very important? On average, we have lagged behind the French by 20% over the last 20 years. Does the Minister agree that the answer is to invest more in people and lifelong learning? If he agrees, can he tell me what the Government will do about it?
Lord Freud
An economist would reply that the way to get more productivity out of people is to put more capital in and raise the quality of people’s input. It is clearly a long-standing issue that we have lower productivity than other major countries; the comparisons are often with the US and Germany. However, there is something about the structure of our service-based economy that means the comparisons are not necessarily what they seem to be. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that one of the major challenges of this economy is to get our productivity up.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, of the 2.3 million jobs that the Minister states were created, how many were given to United Kingdom citizens?
Lord Freud
The bulk of people in the country are British citizens—as are 90% of those in the workplace. The majority of those extra jobs have gone to British citizens but a substantial proportion have gone to outsiders.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister reflect on the paradox that if more people are being assessed more rigorously as being eligible and fit for work, even with disabilities—he and I agree on that—there is a certain irony in using the increase in the volume cost of the personal independence payment as a reason for taking away that PIP from those who have been judged to be so disabled that they are entitled to additional support, some of which will eventually enable them to take work? Is it not therefore a completely cost-ineffective means of dealing with the challenge of increased PIP to reduce the number of people who are eligible for it?
Lord Freud
We carried out a survey of a representative sample of about 400 people, with, I think, 95% accuracy. We found that the vast bulk of people in the categories that we are talking about did not have extra costs apart from the aids and appliances they were using. Some of those aids and appliances were, for instance, a bed. We found that extra costs were not applied to these particular measures.
European Union: Single Market
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Civitas publication, Myth and Paradox of the Single Market: How the trade benefits of EU Membership have been mis-sold, and what discussions they have had with the Governor of the Bank of England about that report.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, in order to inform policy-making, the Government review and note the wider evidence, including the Civitas publication, on an ongoing basis. The UK will be better off in a reformed Europe because British businesses will have full participation in the free trade single market, bringing jobs, investment, lower prices and financial security. The Government’s new settlement confirms that there will be a new focus on further extending the single market.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
I regret that the Government are so dismissive of this ground-breaking report, which shows that four smaller non-EU countries —Chile, Korea, Singapore and Switzerland—have been able to make vastly more free trade deals than has the EU, with its pretended clout, on our behalf. Can the Government tell us why, as the world’s fifth largest economy, we could not do as well or better if we left the EU? Secondly, do the Government accept that the single market would want to continue its free trade with us, because we are its largest client?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
That is a fact, my Lords. Would Brexit be not so much a leap in the dark for our overseas trade as a leap into the light?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I think that I said in my opening reply that the Government took into account all evidence, although that does not mean to say that they agree with it. The Government’s view is clear. We believe that any other alternative to EU membership would leave Britain worse off. No free trade agreement, including the Canada-EU free trade agreement, is as successful in removing the non-tariff barriers to trade as a single market. This is particularly important for Britain, which relies less on goods, which are hindered by tariffs, and more on services, which are hindered by the non-tariff barriers. No country outside the EU has agreed full access to the single market without paying into the EU and accepting free movement. As far as the trade imbalance that the noble Lord mentioned—he is right about it—he talked of a leap in the dark, but he must also recognise the fact that, while half the goods that we exported went to the EU, when you look at it from the EU’s point of view, 7% of the EU’s goods came to the UK. I hardly think that that is a strong negotiating stance to get all 27 countries to agree unanimously to a new trade deal in two years.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My noble friend the Minister referred to a reformed European Union. There is no reformed European Union. Indeed, the European Union has proved itself to be unreformable. If the single market is such an economic miracle, why does he think that the European Union is widely recognised as being something close to an economic disaster zone at the present time? Why does he think that in the latest opinion poll in France, published in Le Monde a few days ago, 53% of the French people said that they would like a referendum so that they could leave the European Union?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, when the noble Lord says that the European Union is not reformed, he ignores the fact that we are out of the parts of the Union that do not work for us. We will not have to join the euro. That is agreed. We will not have to be part of eurozone bailouts. That is agreed. We will not be part of the European army. That is agreed. Importantly, we will not be part of a EU superstate. We have the best of both worlds—and the one thing that we have is a market of 500 million people on our doorstep without any trade barriers at all.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I have not assessed the Civitas report, but I have read quite a lot of it. I think that the former Business Minister, Edward Davey, might be a little surprised to see that he had been a catalyst for a whole 213-page document about the single market. We were told earlier that it was a ground-breaking document, but even the author of the Civitas paper says that,
“non-member countries pay nothing for exporting to the Single Market, other than the tariff and trade costs of individual exporters”.
Would the Minister not agree that that is the very reason that the United Kingdom needs to be in the single market, precisely so that our individual exporters are not subject to the tariffs that third countries are subject to? Can the Minister tell us—
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I agree. The question is whether a genuinely free trade area of 500 million people on our doorstep is a good thing to be part of.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of lower prices in the single market. However, since this organisation is a protectionist one, is it not clearly the case that consumers within the EU are paying higher prices than they would otherwise be paying?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I shall just give the example of flights, which have come down dramatically in price.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, as we are on this subject, could my noble friend clear up a little matter of fact? Were those letters that were published over the names of distinguished former military personnel and leading industrialists drafted by people being paid by Her Majesty’s Government who subsequently importuned those gentlemen for their signatures?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am afraid that my briefing did not cover that. What I can do is commend to the House the speech made in the debate on 2 March by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, who made it very clear why it is preferable to remain in the EU.
Apprenticeships
Baroness Wilcox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many apprenticeships have been created since 2010 compared to the previous six years; and what they are doing to spread best practice amongst employers of apprentices.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, there have been 2.7 million apprenticeship starts in the last six years, and 1.2 million in the previous six years. We have introduced reforms to encourage employers to design high-quality apprenticeships; announced the new institute for apprenticeships; delivered National Apprenticeship Week, which is this week; and established a new Apprenticeship Delivery Board, which is encouraging more businesses to deliver high-quality apprenticeships.
Baroness Wilcox (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I do not think she mentioned this but maybe I should: this is National Apprenticeship Week, which is why I am on my feet today. I almost brought in my father’s indentures with me, but I thought that would be showing off. For many young people taking the apprenticeship training route, it is important that they earn while they learn. By how much has the minimum wage for apprentices risen over the last year?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, all apprentices must earn while they train. It is a real job. In October 2015 the apprenticeship national minimum wage increased by 21% to £3.30 an hour, and this October we are increasing it again by 3% to £3.40 an hour. Of course, most apprentices are paid much more than the minimum wage.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, a number of key stakeholders, including colleges, training providers and small businesses, are not represented on the Apprenticeship Delivery Board, which the Minister has just mentioned. That being the case, how will the board be able effectively to ensure and promote best practice?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, consultation has been a key feature in all the work that we have been doing on apprenticeships. I certainly take the noble Baroness’s point that we need to ensure that those particular groups are properly consulted and helped with good practice. We will be publishing a lot more material on how the apprenticeship system will work in coming months.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, how many of the apprenticeships that the Minister has just set out would be recognised as real apprenticeships in Germany?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Not all of them, I suspect. This gives me the opportunity to say that I think we are doing the right thing and that the levy will help to correct two decades of underinvestment in apprenticeships and insufficient attention to quality. Our whole approach is to increase standards, make every apprenticeship last at least a year and generally change the whole basis of training in this country.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the growing number of apprenticeships, and I met some very impressive apprentices at a dinner in the House yesterday evening. To meet the Government’s target of 3 million by 2020, many more SMEs will need to be persuaded to offer apprenticeships. What are the Government doing to encourage SMEs and make it easier for them to offer apprenticeships?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
There are two things. First, we need a much greater level of awareness; I spoke about that in my first Answer. Secondly, we need incentives. Of course the levy will provide more funding that can be made available, and 98% of employers will not have to contribute to that levy at all. There is also the apprenticeship grant for employers, which provides £1,500 to small businesses taking on their first new apprentice aged 16 to 24.
Baroness Warsi (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on the huge amount of work done on apprenticeships, especially the new progress on university apprenticeships. But is my noble friend aware of reports showing that female apprentices earn less than males, are likely to receive less training than males, and are more likely than males to be unemployed at the end of an apprenticeship? While I congratulate the Government on all the work they are doing, could they look at this area and ensure that the gender pay gap and other differences in the wider workplace do not start to play out between men and women in apprenticeships, too?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Apprenticeships are of course subject to the same equality duties as any other employment, and 53% of starts in 2014-15 were female. But my noble friend makes a good point: are females finding it more difficult to finish? That is an interesting contribution to the debate, which I will certainly reflect on.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister tell the House what proportion of black and minority ethnic people, including Gypsies and Travellers, have taken up apprenticeships?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, 10.6% of those starting an apprenticeship in 2014-15 had a BME background—an increase from 8% in 2009-10. We have set ourselves a target of increasing the proportion by 20% by 2020. I do not know whether those figures include Gypsies, but I will let the noble Baroness know.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the businessman David Meller and Nadhim Zahawi of the other place, who chair the new Apprenticeship Delivery Board? In the light of the Chancellor’s comments yesterday in the Budget on his commitment to extend further education loans to the over-19s, how many apprentices will benefit from this extension?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
To quote my noble friend’s response to a previous question, my briefing does not cover the answer to that question. The Chancellor made it clear that we are giving levy employers a 10% top-up to their monthly levy contributions—but I shall write to my noble friend about the education side.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, 96% of apprenticeships are restricted to levels 2 and 3; I am sure we would all like to see that extended. There is also a problem about age, as in recent years most apprenticeships have gone to those aged over 24, although the target age is much younger. Will the Minister also comment on how apprenticeship completions are going? According to the latest figures, they are down from 76% in 2010-11 to 68% in 2013-14—something that must be reversed.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The noble Lord is right to be concerned about the decline in completion rates. What seems to be happening is that as we are raising standards, requiring the apprenticeship to last for a year and generally toughening up, completion rates are falling. We will publish an operating model in April and information on funding rates in June. In that work, and in the quality work that we are doing, we need to take into account the essential importance of ensuring that youngsters are able to end their apprenticeships as well as begin them.
Help to Save Scheme
Lord Young of Cookham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following their announcement concerning the Help to Save scheme, how many people in work and receiving either Working Tax Credit or Universal Credit are expected to benefit from that scheme.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, 3.5 million people on the lowest incomes will be eligible to open a Help to Save account when the scheme is launched, which will be no later than April 2018.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. As nearly half the adult population have savings of less than £500, it is clearly sensible to have a scheme like this to encourage them to put money on one side for a rainy day. As by definition these savers are on low incomes, can my noble friend give an assurance that these accounts will be easy to access and accessible without penalty?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My noble friend is correct. This is designed specifically for those on low incomes. In fact, we think that 95% of the eligible population from households will have total incomes of less than £30,000. The idea is that people will be able to withdraw at any time without penalty to cover urgent costs. The Government will consult shortly on how exactly the bonus should work. We want to avoid disincentivising people from making withdrawals when they need to. The whole point is to get households saving a bit so that they can cope with unexpected shocks.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com said that,
“there is a risk ‘Help to Save’ could substantially mis-prioritize people’s finances. Already, many people make the mistake of trying to save when they are in debt, and yet the cost of debt for most usually vastly outweighs the gain of saving”.
Can the Minister say what percentage of those eligible are in debt and what guidance in this area will accompany the scheme?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
To take the last bit of the noble Lord’s question first, there will be a consultation as I said, and these details will have to be gone into, not least with the providers of these accounts. This is to help prevent people getting into debt in the first place. I take the point the noble Lord raised. There are potential dangers, but at the same time I return the quote. The chief executive of StepChange Debt Charity said:
“We welcome Government recognition of the need for a savings scheme aimed at those on low incomes. Our research shows that if every household in the UK had £1,000 in rainy day savings, 500,000 would be protected from falling into problem debt”.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
Is this not a replication of the Labour Government’s excellent Saving Gateway scheme, which was so foolishly abolished by the coalition Government?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The Saving Gateway, which had cross-party support, is similar. This scheme is improved. The fact is that at the time the Saving Gateway was unaffordable in the context of the financial position that the Government inherited. I do not think it matters whether this scheme is as successful or not as the Saving Gateway; the point is that it is achieving a good end.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I welcome the scheme, but is it not being paid for by the very workers at whom it is aimed—those on universal credit and tax credits? The Government are cutting £1,600 a year from the universal credit payments of these very low-paid workers. Perhaps if the Government had let them keep their universal credit they could have saved on their own. In reality, is it not, as my honourable friend Owen Smith put it,
“like stealing someone’s car and offering them a lift to the bus stop”?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The difference in what the noble Baroness has said is that they would not have the 50% government bonus after two years.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, the New Economics Foundation report by Sarah Lyall notes that 15% of people in the UK—approximately 7.4 million people—have turned to debt for essential day-to-day spending. It also notes that 6% of people in the UK—approximately 3 million—use credit as a safety net on a weekly basis. Will the Minister please explain how those people will be able to save?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
We want to prevent people getting into debt. Half the people on low incomes do not have one week’s wages spare. If we get people into the habit of saving—in the scheme they have to save only £1 pound a month to start with; it can go up to £50 a month—it will prevent people getting into debt in the first place. The Government are subsidising that to incentivise people to do that.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Notwithstanding that this is a good scheme, did the Minister hear the “Today” programme this morning, on which John Humphrys tore the Chancellor apart for failing to deliver on his promises? Does the Minister agree on the importance of the independence of the BBC—even though it may not be in his brief?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I did not hear the “Today” programme. The reason this is not in my brief is that the noble Lord’s question has nothing to do with the Question on the Order Paper.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, will the Minister affirm the importance, in addition to the Help to Save scheme, of the increasing number of credit unions which routinely go into schools to try and create a culture of saving from the very earliest age, to address the endemic problem of a presupposition of debt?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I agree with the right reverend Prelate. As I said, we want to increase saving, and we have taken measures to support credit unions.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as one who did hear the “Today” programme, I ask if my noble friend agrees that interpretation is in the ear of the listener.
Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Occupational Pension Schemes (Scheme Administration) (Amendment) Regulations 2016
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Altmann
That the draft Order and Regulations laid before the House on 1 and 8 February be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 March.
Companies (Address of Registered Office) Regulations 2016
The Earl of Courtown
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 8 February be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 March.
Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Beecham
“(c) plots on which gypsies, travellers and travelling showpeople can have both residential accommodation and space for the storage of equipment.”
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, Section 225 of the Housing Act 2004 requires housing authorities to carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers who reside in or resort to their area, and Section 226 allows the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the carrying out of this responsibility. An order was subsequently made in 2007 about implementing the provisions of the 2004 Act.
The Bill seeks to change the situation. There are two ways of looking at its provisions in respect of Gypsy and Traveller sites. Either they will absolve councils of their responsibility for planning to meet the needs of these groups for sites, which will make a difference to the position laid down in the 2004 in terms of what will happen on the ground; or, as the impact assessment suggests, it will not. If the latter is indeed the case, the only reason for the Government to include Clause 115 in the Bill is to throw a bone to councils and some communities that wish to make as little provision as possible, preferably none, by implying that the Government are responding to opposition to such provision, which unfortunately is fairly widespread. Such would be the sort of clients who might be disposed to engage the assistance of an organisation called Planning Direct. This organisation’s comments on the relevant clause distastefully boast of a 100% success rate in stopping Traveller sites for parish councils, for which in its publication it helpfully supplies contact details. If the Bill makes or is intended to make little or no difference, why does it include the provision in the first place?
Another organisation, Planning Resource, which describes itself as providing independent intelligence for planning professionals, reports divided opinions among planners. The strategic planning convenor for the Planning Officers Society believes that it will have little impact, but also believes that there is some real concern over councils misinterpreting the rules and that the change is,
“almost like handing local authorities, which are reluctant to plan for travellers, an excuse not to do it”.
Others, in fairness, take a more positive view of the change, but Marc Willers QC declared that he has,
“no doubt that site provision will reduce and that the shortage of accommodation for Gypsies and travellers will increase if the requirement to assess their needs is subsumed into a more general housing needs assessment and the guidance on assessing their needs is swept away”—
that is to say, the problems will increase when an assessment of their needs is no longer required.
The all-party parliamentary group for Gypsies and Travellers echoes those concerns, describing the combination of the new Planning Policy for Traveller Sites, published last August, and the Bill as making for a “complex, confusing system”. It adds that the Traveller site planning policy leaves open questions as to the assessment of,
“the needs of Gypsies and Travellers within and outside the new planning definition”.
Moreover, most authorities will have completed their general housing needs assessment in any event and may not have included Gypsies and Travellers. It points to the potentially paradoxical outcome that the uncertainty may lead to more unauthorised encampments. The all-party group commended Leeds City Council, which conducted a full assessment of needs several years ago and provided a number of new pitches, thereby saving as much as £2,000 a week on services that it would otherwise have had to provide.
Concern over the provision is widespread. The Catholic Association for Racial Justice is deeply concerned about the latest planning policy for sites which it says is making it much harder for Gypsies and Travellers to obtain planning permission to live even on their own land. It concludes:
“The impact of these … changes could be very undermining for Gypsy and Traveller communities, increasing their already serious disadvantage and marginalisation”.
The chair of the Greater London Authority housing committee, Tom Copley, wrote in December to the Minister, Brandon Lewis, reporting that his committee had written to the Mayor of London in January 2015 with five recommendations that he thought would be undermined by the Bill. The committee considered that the Gypsy and Traveller community could be further marginalised by its provisions and that its suggestions for toleration sites would be undermined by removing the requirement for assessments of need. He called on the Minister to reconsider the changes. Can the Minister say whether her honourable friend Mr Lewis did so? Did he reply to the letter—and, if so, in what terms?
At the heart of the problem is the glossary appended to the planning guidance as to the definition of Gypsies and Travellers which lists three issues, among other unspecified matters, in determining whether people are Gypsies and Travellers: namely,
“whether they previously led a nomadic habit of life … the reasons for ceasing their nomadic habit … whether there is an intention of”,
renewing it,
“how soon, and in what circumstances”—
matters which noble Lords may think are rather difficult to establish.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 82H, which has broad support across this House. This is a simple probing amendment that would seek to retain Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 in legislation, requiring local authorities to undertake a direct assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. I shall also speak to Amendment 82GD, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, which may point towards an alternative way forward.
I start by welcoming the publication of the Government’s draft guidance on Clause 115, which makes clear the duty of local authorities to undertake a specific assessment of all those whose primary residence is in caravans or houseboats, including Gypsies, Travellers and showmen communities. The very presence of this draft guidance is reassuring, and I am glad that the Government are making progress. I recognise that in the rush to get this guidance out it may not have been possible for Ministers and officials to consult all stakeholders about the content but I am sure that the Minister will reassure the House that all the relevant parties—including representatives of the Gypsy and Traveller communities—will be consulted extensively before final guidance is published. I know that there are a number of concerns about the proposed guidance, not least the failure to define what is meant by a household —something which has led to a great deal of confusion and cross-authority discrepancies in the past, as authorities have defined it in different ways.
I understand that the Government’s stated intention behind Clause 115 is to remove a general perception that Gypsies and Travellers are given favourable treatment under planning law. I also recognise that under current legislation there is no requirement to perform a specific assessment of those residing in caravans and on waterways who are not part of the Gypsy and Traveller communities, and that this may result in such groups slipping through the net when local authorities assess housing needs. As such, I have no objection in principle to the expansion of the existing assessment requirements to cover all those residing in caravans and on waterways, as long as this is genuinely an expansion and does not threaten the current arrangements regarding assessment of specific Gypsy and Traveller needs.
With this in mind I will highlight two main concerns, which I hope the Government will address. The first is the total lack of mention of Gypsy and Traveller communities in Clause 115 and only the smallest mention of them in the draft guidance. It is important to bear in mind that some local authorities, often under pressure from the wider community to refrain from making land available for Gypsy and Traveller sites, are liable to seize on any excuse not to undertake a full and detailed assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. The Government’s own impact assessment seems to recognise that the failure to put reference to Gypsies and Travellers in primary legislation—relegating any mention to secondary guidance only—may give local authorities the impression that the importance of assessing those needs has been downgraded in the new legislation. Making it clear in primary legislation that any assessment requirements include a requirement to assess the needs of Gypsies, Travellers and showmen residing in or having recourse to a local authority is therefore essential to maintain the pressure on local authorities to carry out such an assessment.
The simplest way of ensuring that the Gypsy and Traveller communities are directly mentioned in primary legislation is to ensure that Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 remain in legislation, as my amendment proposes. I see no reason why the two pieces of legislation cannot stand side by side, with local authorities subsuming the Gypsy and Traveller assessment requirement within the broader assessment of caravans and waterways. There are, of course, alternative ways of maintaining reference to Gypsies and Travellers, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, being one of them. None of these amendments would in any way imperil the Government’s aim of expanding the assessment requirement and ensuring parity of treatment for all in the assessment process.
The second concern that I have centres on the categories of caravans and inland waterways that are proposed in Clause 115 and reflected in the draft guidance. The use of these simple categories fails to capture the nuanced differences in the needs of the groups for which this legislation is intended to provide assessment, and may result in an inadequate assessment process if these nuances are not made clear. The accommodation needs of those residing in static caravans, for example, may be very different from the needs of Gypsy communities that are constantly on the move, which will again be very different from the needs of travelling showmen, who often require extra space for vehicles and equipment. I hope the Minister can confirm that these distinctions will be made clear in the revised guidelines and that any assessment will be required to differentiate between them.
What these categories ignore altogether, however, is the requirement that local authorities include the needs of Gypsies and Travellers living in settled, bricks-and-mortar housing in their assessment, despite this being included in the guidance. Given that any guidance issued is guidance only, can the Minister explain to the House how the Government intend to ensure that local authorities assess vulnerable Gypsy and Traveller families who might be abiding in bricks-and-mortar housing, perhaps only temporarily, when under Clause 115 there will be no statutory duty on them to do so?
I hope that everyone across the House recognises the importance of ensuring that local authorities are equipped to provide properly for the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers in their communities. A failure to provide a proper, robust requirement on local authorities to assess the needs of Gypsies and Travellers will inevitably hinder the provision of accommodation sites and space, which is only likely to increase the number of illegal sites, stoke community tensions and endanger a cultural identity that has endured for hundreds of years.
If the Government are committed to expanding the assessment requirement, that expansion needs to be done very carefully, building on the good work that is already being done to foster stronger relationships between local authorities and vulnerable minority communities. Indeed, I hope the Government might use these legislative changes as an opportunity to work with the Gypsy and Traveller communities to improve the assessment process, not undermine it. I hope the Minister can provide assurance that this will be the case.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment and draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the Register of Interests as a district councillor. I flagged up at Second Reading that I would be returning to this issue, and I support wholeheartedly the comments of the previous two speakers.
In 2004, while I was still the leader of Somerset County Council, the Government passed the Housing Act, of which Section 225 ensured that:
“Every housing authority must, when undertaking a review of housing needs in their district under section 8 of the Housing Act 1985 … carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of gypsies and travellers residing in or resorting to their district”,
and prepare a strategy to meet those needs. Section 226 went on to provide guidance on how this was to be carried out. This significant step forward required councils to make assessments of the Travelling community’s needs. Of course, many councils had been doing this for a considerable time and making the necessary provision as a result; however, many were not—bowing to extremes of public opinion and abdicating their duty to provide accommodation for all types of people.
I am at a loss to understand why, apart from again bowing to pressure from certain quarters, the Government are now seeking to delete this requirement for local authorities to make provision in their housing needs assessments and local plans for sites for Travelling communities. The requirement is there now and is not arduous. Making it virtually impossible for Travelling communities to find permanent or temporary sites will only lead to an increase in what are known as illegal encampments. I will refer to this again later.
As we have heard, there are several groups of Travelling communities: Roma Gypsies, covered by the Race Equality Act; showpeople, including those in the circus trade, fairgrounds and historic seasonal fairs; and other Travellers, some of whom are called “new age” Travellers. The groups are distinct and have different requirements. I have long been an advocate of the need to provide permanent sites for individual Gypsy families, which will often include more than one generation. I have received a briefing from Friends, Families and Travellers and I have also met with representatives of the Showmen’s Guild and received a briefing from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Most of us will have seen at one time or another a group of caravans parked on a wide grass verge, in a lay-by, in a farmer’s field, or even in a town centre car park—the latter can be very disruptive to residents trying to park to do their shopping or visit the library. However, mostly the caravans are in the countryside and cause little problem. Sometimes the local landowner will allow them to stay, but more commonly legal action is taken to move them on. This is costly and, without legalised authorised sites to move them on to, only displaces them further down the road, or maybe over the neighbouring county boundary, where they become someone else’s problem.
In March 2015, guidance was produced by the DCLG, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice on Dealing with Illegal and Unauthorised Encampments. Most of this dealt with moving the problem on and said:
“Public bodies should not gold-plate human rights and equalities legislation”.
Did any of them ever actually do this? The document might just as well have said, “Ignore it altogether”. This is despite statistics from January 2015 showing there were 593 more caravans on authorised sites than the year before—so not illegally camped.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as president of Friends, Families and Travellers. I am proud to attach my name to Amendment 82H, not only because of the breadth and distinction of its support from the highest levels in this House—I know that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, very much regrets that he cannot be here. I also speak in memory of my friend Lord Avebury, whose amendment to the Housing Act 2004 the Government’s proposal in Clause 115 seeks to destroy. He was throughout his life a campaigner for justice and fairness and, when the Government of the day repealed his Caravan Sites Act 1968, which resulted in a few hundred more sites, he sought tirelessly to bring in replacement provisions, culminating in those in the 2004 legislation, in which I was honoured to join him.
Why is it necessary to oblige local authorities specifically to include Gypsies and Travellers in their housing needs assessments? It is because without this, as has been said, local authorities have an excuse to shirk even more their responsibility to provide sites for that small proportion of Travelling people—which, as has been said, includes showpeople—who need them. The DCLG’s published figures for the Traveller pitch fund are 533 sites for 2011 to 2015, but even that small number is misleading, because it is not a net figure: it omits the pitches lost to development. The real figure is in the region of 305 to 335, according to research done by Friends, Families and Travellers—that is 61 to 67 a year, which can barely respond to household formation, let alone repair the huge gap in provision.
Homelessness is now more acutely on the increase, particularly in the Midlands, because of the Government's new definition of Travellers, so well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which ignores their ethnicity as established in law. Clause 115 did not emerge from consultation, nor was it presaged in the Conservative manifesto. It is as if the Government want, stealthily, to do away with a culture and traditional way of life that is different from that of the settled majority. Instead of bringing in measures that could improve social cohesion and oppose the prejudice that has made this very small minority so often marginalised and deprived—to the severe detriment of its health and education opportunities, let alone ordinary peace of mind—they seek to deepen that deprivation.
Clause 115 did not go unchallenged in the other place. My honourable friend Teresa Pearce cited over 11 national and local organisations, including the Joseph Rowntree Trust and all the leading Gypsy, Traveller and showmen bodies, in her request to remove it. In his response, the Minister, Brandon Lewis, did offer welcome recognition of the duty to assess all housing need. His justification for removing the reference to Gypsies and Travellers was:
“Our clause emphasises that Gypsies and Travellers are not separate members of our communities”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 26/11/15; col. 345]
It has long been recognised that identical treatment is not at all the same as equal treatment. Indeed, in this case it would result in manifest inequality. Mr Lewis may have realised that he was on sticky ground, because he then offered to incorporate,
“any necessary elements of the current ‘Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment Guidance’ in wider planning guidance”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 26/11/15; col. 345]
Guidance has indeed just been published, but without the consultation which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, had offered at her very helpful meeting with the all-party group. It would have benefited from that. What guarantee does it give Travellers, forcibly evicted at great cost to the evicting authority or continually refused planning permission, that their local authority will be obliged by law to ensure that their need for a site is accommodated? I emphasise again the small number concerned—perhaps 25,000 in the whole of England—but even that has proved too much for our majoritarian culture. Advisory guidance with no statutory backing, open to change without parliamentary intervention, will hardly do much when there is no political leadership.
The Government’s own impact assessment has the grace to recognise this, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, said. It says that,
“some local housing authorities may misinterpret the removal of a specific reference and therefore possibly fall short in their duties”.
However, it claims that this is balanced by the eight years’ experience of implementing the previous system and the reference to the provision of caravan sites and houseboats for canal workers. The problem is that the minimal provisions of those eight years needed strengthening, not eroding, to make enough of a difference.
The truth is that the studies which housing authorities carried out to assess need have been, at the best of times, insufficiently disaggregated to pick up small minority communities. Only specific Gypsy and Traveller assessments can ensure that a proper attempt can be made to provide sites which can preserve their way of life and allow them to live legally, in harmony with their settled neighbours. I hope that the Minister will take this on board and accept all the amendments in this group.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly intervene in this debate. It is quite important when considering this issue to bear in mind that some of the local authorities that have dealt with the situation as it currently applies in legislation have found that the legislation itself has given rise to difficulties for them and, in some circumstances, to abuse.
I will say another word about travelling show people. I very much appreciated what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, said about them, and I want, in a sense, to support what they said.
First, on local authorities, I remind your Lordships that I was Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire. That district has one of the largest numbers of sites for Travellers, relative to its population and area, of anywhere in the country. Contrary to some of the implications about the attitude of local authorities in the absence of statutory provisions requiring them to behave in certain ways, the local authorities in the district have always rigorously sought to assess the requirements of Travellers in our area and to provide for it. That is because it has historically been an area where Travellers have been welcome in order to support the industry in the county, not least because of the needs of the farming community. However, the issue is that the specific statutory provisions, which Clause 115 would in effect remove, have not enabled local authorities to make disinterested and even-handed assessments of housing needs for all the members of our community, but have given an opportunity—often not for the legitimate Travelling community, who have been coming to South Cambridgeshire over generations—frankly, for abuse.
I refer not least to Smithy Fen at Cottenham in my former constituency, where some come, assert that they are part of a Travelling community—even in circumstances where they already have established residential accommodation in other places—and use the requirement for an assessment of need, which they then assert has not been met, buying at agricultural prices property in a place where development land values are many orders of magnitude greater. They then take possession and seek planning permission over a period for those properties, giving themselves very large uncovenanted benefits and, in some cases, moving on and doing the same elsewhere. The statutory provisions give a sense that, contrary to what the settled community feels, there has to be a fair assessment and an even-handed effort to meet everybody’s housing needs. Those housing needs are being met in ways that would never be accommodated for the purposes of the settled community. The same piece of land would never be able to be developed by somebody from the settled community whose need for housing might be at least as great. Often, in villages, there are young people who would love to live in that village and would love to have that site available for development but, for material planning reasons, it is not available. Therefore, it is important to them that the local authority has the ability—and should be required—to look at housing need and to respond to it across the community. In many places in consideration of this Bill, many Members on all sides of the House have taken the view that we should trust local authorities, through the planning process, to assess planning need and to provide for it. Frankly, that is what we should do in this case.
Baroness Whitaker
Does the noble Lord accept that overall, nationally, there is a huge shortage of legitimate sites?
Lord Lansley
I shall not comment on that. I am simply commenting on South Cambridgeshire where there is evidence that we—the people of South Cambridgeshire, the local authority and Cambridge city—are trying our hardest persistently to increase the availability of sites and have done so successfully. However, with all that effort, at no point have we been able to satisfy the requirement on the basis simply of asking how many people are seeking sites in South Cambridgeshire. That is a different issue. The issue is—as is true for all housing need—that local authorities must be in a position to decide the balance between the requirement for housing and the availability of sites, consistent with the wider development framework.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I am afraid my experience in the adjacent county of Bedfordshire is different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. That is why I support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Beecham and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I used to be responsible for Gypsy and Traveller health in north London. In my mid-40s I decided to reassess my career and to abandon London—he who is tired of London is not tired of life—to live in rural Bedfordshire.
I saw that the first parish council meeting in my new village was going to deal with Gypsy and Traveller assessment. That sounded like a place that I should be, being really keen having seen the huge mountain that Gypsy and Traveller communities have to climb in a wide variety of areas, not least housing, but also in health and equality generally. It gave me the biggest education I had ever had. It was like a bear pit. The amount of undiluted prejudice on both sides of the argument was so huge that it terrified me. I sat at the back of the parish council meeting—I should say that the parish council regularly attracts about three spectators but on this occasion we had 600—and kept my lip severely zipped. In integrating into the community, I had to recognise that there was huge prejudice surrounding the Gypsy and Traveller community. Ever since that night I have regretted not standing up and saying something.
Having followed the issue for over 25 years, I know that Bedfordshire’s assessment record has improved immensely, but in terms of achieving sites for the Travelling community it has not improved as significantly as I would like. Therefore, anything that allows the importance and prominence of this hugely difficult issue in rural communities to be diluted is a retrograde step. Given half a chance, local authorities faced with this horribly controversial issue will take the line of least resistance if they are allowed to. Therefore, the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans are absolutely required.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for missing the first two or three minutes of the introduction to the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham.
We need to recognise that the Gypsy community suffers multiple disadvantages, and not just in housing. It suffers some of the worst health outcomes in the country, as well as the worst rates of infant mortality and the poorest educational outcomes of any community in the country, and it has the least access to finance of any community in the country. If you do not have a settled existence, and particularly if you are constantly moved on from road verges, it is difficult to open a bank account or to enter the legitimate financial scene.
We also need to recognise that something like 75% or 80% of Gypsies have accommodation that is suitable; it is not a question of the whole community roaming around and looking for somewhere to stay. It is a marginal problem but it is very important and serious, and it is one where we ought to sustain the push with legislation to make sure that local communities face up to their responsibilities.
It is also interesting that many in the Gypsy community are strongly religious. For instance, I remember that when I was a Minister there was a huge row about an unauthorised encampment of Gypsies and fears about hundreds of caravans turning up, but it turned out that they were coming to a Pentecostal Christian event organised for Gypsies. That was counterintuitive, but maybe counterintuitive is what we need to be here. It is the last group in Britain that it is legitimate to slag off in the golf club bar, on the street corner or, indeed, at the parish council in a way that nobody would if those involved were Pakistani, Afro-Caribbean or Chinese people, because, apart from anything else, they would know that it was illegal to do so. They would know that it is something we do not do in Britain but you can still say these things about Gypsies. Unfortunately and sadly, that is the case, and I do not think we should give anybody an excuse to default on their duty.
However, I want to put this issue in a more positive light. We need to give those who want to take their duty seriously some legislative backbone in saying to their communities, “I know this is a tough one. I know it’s difficult, but you can see that the law requires us to do it”. I believe it would be a serious mistake to go backwards on this provision and I hope the Minister will take account of the views that have been expressed.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, in debating this clause, I am conscious of the absence of the late Lord Avebury, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I was saddened, as were others, on hearing of his death. I know that he was a committed and forceful advocate for the rights of the Gypsy and Traveller community, and I hope that together we can do justice to his memory.
I thank all noble Lords for their amendments. I understand their reasoning, which seeks to ensure that local authorities have an explicit duty to assess the accommodation needs of Gypsies, Travellers and Travelling showpeople. I emphasise that this clause does not remove that duty.
I turn first to Amendment 82H, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. The Government’s intention is to ensure that the assessment of accommodation needs is seen to be fair to all. We know that some feel that a specific mention of Gypsies and Travellers in legislation relating to such assessments somehow accords them more favourable treatment. We want to combat that impression which, as my noble friend Lord Lansley mentioned, only adds to misunderstanding between the Traveller and settled communities, not to remove the duty to assess the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Their needs will be assessed, but in a way that is seen to be fair to all.
The aim therefore is to simplify legislation to ensure that the housing and accommodation needs of all the residents and those who resort to an area are considered without specific reference to particular ethnic groups. The clause makes it clear that the needs of those persons who reside in or resort to an area with respect to the provision of caravan sites and moorings for houseboats are considered as part of the review of housing needs. This would include all those who are assessed at present and potentially those who simply choose to live in a caravan, irrespective of their cultural traditions or whether they have ever had a nomadic habit of life. We recognise that for many, but for Travelling showpeople in particular, this assessment needs to include consideration of not only residential accommodation but also space for the storage of equipment—I am speaking particularly about Amendments 82GD and 82GE. That is why we have published draft guidance that makes this explicit.
The definition in Planning Policy for Traveller Sites relates to the provision of sites and is relevant for those seeking planning permission for Traveller sites. The definition is based on proof of nomadism and ensures that planning provision relates to specific land use requirements. The duty in the Housing Act is about assessing the housing and accommodation needs of all in the community and those who resort to it, including those with or without an existing nomadic way of life and those who wish to resort to caravan and houseboat dwelling. We would not wish to align the housing definition with the planning definition as it would limit the scope of the assessment to those who proved an existing nomadic lifestyle. I hope that this reassures the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who raised these points.
Noble Lords and others have rightly raised concerns about human rights, and we are ever mindful of our obligations under both domestic and international law regarding the treatment of protected groups. Therefore, before proposing this clause Ministers gave very careful consideration to their public sector equality duties and the need to ensure that local authorities understand their duty to assess the needs of those living in houseboats and caravans. This includes those with protected characteristics such as Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers, for whom it is recognised that caravan-dwelling is a cultural part of their identity. We have therefore published draft guidance explaining how the needs of such groups should be considered under this revised legislation. We want local authorities to assess the needs of everyone in their communities, and our clause emphasises that Gypsies, Travellers and Travelling showpeople are not separate members of our communities. I hope Lord Avebury would have agreed with me that they should be treated fairly.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked whether my honourable friend the Housing Minister in the other place had responded to a letter from the London Assembly Group. I can reassure him that the Minister responded and explained that the changes in the Bill would not impact on how local authorities assess their needs. Local plans need to be found sound before they are adopted. This means that they should be positively prepared, based on a strategy that seeks to meet objectively assessed development and infrastructure requirements.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked whether any change led to more unauthorised encampments. I can reassure them that the change in legislation is about local housing authorities assessing accommodation needs. It for local planning authorities to ensure that their local plans address the needs of all types of housing and the needs of different groups in the community.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised concerns about local authorities ignoring needs. If a public authority does not comply with the general duty under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010—the public sector equality duty—its actions or failure to act can be challenged by judicial review. He also asked what consultation was undertaken on the draft guidance. Officials in the department and my noble friend the Minister, who is in her place on the Front Bench, have engaged with the Gypsy and Traveller communities through liaison groups, which meet every few months. The guidance is published in draft, so we are continuing to engage with representatives from the Travelling communities. I hope that reassures noble Lords on that point.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
Will the Minister say a bit more about whether he sees this as a watering-down of the provisions? Clause 115(2) seeks to remove Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act, which state that a “housing authority must”—it is a very clear duty. This clause would replace that with a “duty to consider”. My noble friend Lady Whitaker said that this would allow authorities to shirk their responsibilities and, as my noble friend Lady Young said, take the line of least resistance. How are we to avoid that?
Before I conclude, many noble Lords have mentioned Lord Avebury. He was a very good man and we all miss him very much. I know which side of the debate he would be on if he were in his place today. It is worth noting that just a couple of days ago, on 15 March, it was the anniversary of his famous by-election win in Orpington.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I understand the thinking behind the noble Lord’s question, but I might put it another way. He used the word “watering-down”, but it could also be said that it might lead to local authorities underestimating the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Again, as I hope I have made clear, that is absolutely not the case: the proposed changes to primary legislation make it clear that the needs of all those, including Gypsies and Travellers, who reside in or resort to a district are considered in the same way as before in respect of the provision of caravans, sites and moorings.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
If so, why is the change needed? Will the Minister tell us why things are not being left as they are?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I made it clear at the beginning that this is to do with simplifying the legislation.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, by the standards of Committee stage on the Bill, this has been a relatively short debate, and I will not prolong it too much. But I find myself slightly puzzled at the position that we end up in.
First, I thank those who participated. Most have supported the amendments. One of the most telling phrases was that of the right reverend Prelate, who said that the provisions in the Bill failed to capture the nuances of the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. I think that that is right. I particularly welcomed the participation of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, who is a tireless campaigner for the groups that are the subject of this amendment.
I was, however, slightly puzzled by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I very much welcomed the rare degree of agreement between us, which we did occasionally experience in his ministerial past, but the notion that somehow it was the system that created the problem in his constituency where, as he put it, a particular group took possession of land and developed it, strikes me as a little odd. This is not the Wild West. Presumably they did not just walk on to somebody else’s land and erect fencing around it. They must have acquired the land and they must, presumably, have got planning permission for building on it. The implication was that they had developed it and sold it and moved on. The noble Lord is shaking his head. Perhaps I have misunderstood him.
Lord Lansley
To be clear, yes, they acquired it, but at agricultural values. Then the utilities were provided because the utility companies were required to do so. Then, of course, they subsequently made retrospective planning applications. Often in particular circumstances, when they were refused planning permission, they based the essence of their argument to the inspectors that they had a housing need as Travellers in the area, that the local authority was not providing collectively for all the housing needs of Travellers, and that therefore their particular application should be granted.
Lord Beecham
Then that is a failure of the planning system, not of the particular requirements of this group. However, let us go back a little. Section 8 of the 1985 Housing Act required every local housing authority to,
“consider housing conditions in their district and the needs of the district with respect to the provision of further housing accommodation”.
That clause was effectively amended by the 2004 Act. It was amended because insufficient provision was being made for this group and because very often it was not made because of pressure from people who feared or, at any rate, opposed provision for the categories of would-be residents that we were talking about.
If the 2004 Act was in response to the failure by then of authorities to make provision—and that clearly is the case—what sort of message does it send to remove that duty under the 2004 Act and then say, “Well, it’s all right because they have a duty to consider everything”? They had that duty under the 1985 Act and it was clearly not being fulfilled.
There is a special case here and I hope that the Minister will, with his colleagues, think again about a clause which in my view is specifically designed to buy off support for those who do not want to see provision being made for this vulnerable group. At this stage, I will not test the opinion of the House, but it is a matter to which we may well return on Report, unless the Government reconsider. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“(c) has a current entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents as set out in Part 2 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, as this is my first proper intervention in today's proceedings, notwithstanding the questions I asked in the previous debate, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests and also declare that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham.
I should also say in this opening contribution, as I have voiced in previous debates, that our proper consideration of this Bill and all its clauses and schedules is made all the more difficult because of the poor handling of the Bill through Parliament by the Government. I do not feel that it is going to be any better today. It is a scandal how poorly prepared the Government are. At every session we are either highlighting new problems or discovering new issues that will make the implementation of the measures in the Bill even more difficult to deliver.
This Bill should have been proposed in the Queen’s Speech in May this year, having had proper pre-legislative scrutiny in this Session of Parliament. I should further add that running three days of Committee in a row next week is not, in my opinion, ensuring that we get the best out of these debates. It makes preparation for debates difficult and the scrutiny process very difficult.
With today’s Committee day and then three days next week—and, I understand, proposals for two of the first three days when we return after Easter being reserved for Report, it means that, including today’s debate, the main business in six of the next seven days in your Lordships’ House will be the Housing and Planning Bill. It is not a good way to proceed; not a good way to make legislation; not a good way to treat Parliament; not a good way to treat local authorities which are trying to understand what is happening and interject with their views; not a good way to treat the voluntary sector which is trying to keep up with what is going on and give its views; and not a good way for the Government to be seen to be taking on board the views expressed to them, and hopefully responding to them. It is all unsatisfactory and all of the Government’s own making.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I agree entirely. It is not good for the Minister or indeed for all Members of your Lordships’ House; there are many Members who have been here all the time for these debates.
Amendment 83 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Beecham is quite simple in its intention and, hopefully, will cause the Government no problems at all. That said, I often think that my amendments will help the Government and improve the legislation and should be of no concern at all, but so far I have not been able to persuade them of that fact. Still, we carry on in the hope that on Report the issues and concerns that we have raised will be responded to, because, although we do not like the Bill, we fully understand our role as a revising Chamber in seeking to improve the Bill before it becomes an Act of Parliament.
The amendment seeks to add, in an additional clause, that those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents cannot be granted an HMO licence. A house in multiple occupation is a property rented by at least three people who are not from one family but who share facilities such as the bathroom and the kitchen. A licence is required if the property is rented out to five or more people who are from more than one family, the property is at least three storeys high and tenants share facilities such as the toilet, the bathroom or the kitchen. It is important that people identified as rogue landlords should be specifically unable to rent out properties as houses in multiple occupation and should be prevented from obtaining a licence to rent out such properties. My amendment is clear, straightforward and simple. I look forward to the Government’s response, and I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, Amendment 83, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would require a local authority to have regard to the fact that a landlord had been included in the database of rogue landlords and property agents when considering an application from that landlord for a licence to operate a house in multiple occupation or selective licensing. A local authority is already required to have regard to a range of factors when deciding whether to grant a licence under the Housing Act 2004. These include whether the applicant has committed any offence involving fraud or other dishonesty, or violence or drugs, or certain serious sexual offences; practised unlawful discrimination; or contravened any provision of the law relating to housing, or of landlord and tenant law. These factors would be likely to include all the offences leading to inclusion in the database. The database will be a key source of information for local authorities when taking decisions on whether to grant a licence.
These safeguards are very important as it is essential that a local authority can be confident that a licence is granted to a landlord or agent only if they can demonstrate that they are a fit and proper person to operate a house in multiple occupation or a property subject to selective licensing, and will not pose a risk to the health and safety of their tenants, many of whom may be vulnerable. Clause 116 includes two further safeguards by providing that a local authority will also be required to have regard to whether the landlord has leave to remain in the UK, is an undischarged bankrupt or is insolvent.
The aim of Amendment 83 is to ensure that local authorities fully consider the past behaviour of landlords and agents who are applying for a licence. The Government are extremely sympathetic to this aim. To do this, local authorities need access to information about the previous activities of a landlord and to share that information across local authority boundaries. The database will be an important step forward in sharing information about convictions recorded against residential landlords and property agents. It is extremely unlikely that a local authority would be unaware of a matter leading to an entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents when deciding if an applicant was a fit and proper person. I trust that with this explanation, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that explanation, which was very helpful. I will happily withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I suspect that this will be another very brief discussion. Schedule 9 amends the Housing Act 2004 to provide that any financial penalty should be an alternative to prosecuting a rogue landlord for an offence. The Explanatory Notes give no justification for this change, and, given what we know about some of the appalling conditions that rogue landlords create or tolerate, I see no reason why they should be immune from a criminal prosecution.
It is perfectly legitimate that a financial penalty should be imposed, but it is a matter of good sense to ensure that totally unacceptable behaviour is treated as a crime, in the hope of deterring others from committing the same offence and behaving disgracefully towards their tenants, rather than their simply being able to pay a financial penalty without any publicity. The deterrent effect of prosecution ought to be invoked.
Indeed, even leaving aside deterrence, conduct of the kind that we regularly read about is simply appalling, and society’s rejection of such an approach by landlords should be made clear by retaining the possibility of prosecuting them. In the absence of any explanation of why the change should be made, I hope that the House will express a view and the Government will reconsider this strange provision. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, Amendment 84, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would make a change to Clause 117 so that a local housing authority could impose a civil penalty in addition to, rather than as an alternative to, prosecuting a landlord. The Bill as drafted provides local housing authorities with a choice on whether they want to go down the civil penalty route or the prosecution route, depending on the seriousness of the offence. We have looked at this carefully and come to the conclusion that it would be disproportionate to use both regimes in relation to the same conduct.
Local authorities will benefit from other measures proposed in the Bill. For instance, they can apply for a rent repayment order where the rent has been paid from housing benefit or universal credit where certain housing offences have been committed, as set out in Part 2 of the Bill. This is in addition to the powers already available through the Housing Act 2004 whereby magistrates can impose unlimited fines on conviction for the most serious housing offences. I hope that after this brief explanation the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
The Minister referred to reasonable fines. What scale of fines are we talking about here?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I do not have details of the fines, but I shall be more than happy to write to the noble Lord with them.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
Could the Minister comment on whether this would cover the instances that I have spoken about of invisible rogue landlords who give their tenants no rent books, nor anything of any sort? Would a criminal offence not have a bit more impact on them, and encourage them to be fair to the people living in their properties?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I was answering the points raised by noble Lords, and the main point is that we think it disproportionate to use both regimes. I hope that that answers the noble Baroness’s question. I am now able to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about fines. The answer is: up to £30,000.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The Minister says that it is up to £30,000. There has been an interesting series of programmes recently, I think on BBC on weekday mornings, in which a team has been going out and looking at properties, particularly in east London, where invariably ethnic minority landlords are exploiting illegal entrants to the United Kingdom, or indeed other people from within the ethnic minority. I have made a point of watching some of these programmes and have begun to realise that these landlords are dancing round local authority officials. The local authority officials seem almost unwilling to exercise real responsibility to bring these people to court. When we talk about up to £30,000, we may end up with little fines of a few hundred pounds for what appear to me to be major offences. Huge breaches are going on in London in properties that come under Sections 64 to 67 of the 2004 Act.
The law seems quite clear. You would imagine that the law would work, but the reality is that it is not working. These people are not being pursued. My noble friend used the phrase “in addition” and I think that it is important that those words are introduced. These rogue landlords need to know that they will not only be taken to court—where they can hire smart-backsided lawyers who can manage to get the fines reduced to whatever level they think is acceptable by simply acting in the interests of their clients—but will be pursued by the authorities, which, I understand, have the right to use that money to do up the property.
The Government are taking a very weak-handed view in dealing with this matter. HMO properties in London are at the bottom end of the market in terms of the treatment of tenants by landlords. The law needs to be tightened up in this area. I hope that when we get to Report we can table amendments that everyone will support to bring home the lesson to the Government that this area is not being dealt with in a good enough way.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I wanted to expand on my previous answer to say that prosecution fines are unlimited civil penalties of, as I mentioned, up to a figure of £30,000. It may give the noble Lord some reassurance to say that we have the power to provide guidance to local authorities on what to use and when in terms of fines. We intend to consult local authorities on the guidance on this matter.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Perhaps I can pursue this a little further. How many people have actually been charged, nationally and in London, over the last 12 months, say? Does the brief tell us the number of people who have been through the courts or do the lawyers manage somehow to deflect the legal actions? If the Minister does not have the reply, perhaps he can indicate to the Box that the information might be made available to us during discussion of a subsequent amendment.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I can certainly offer a reply to the noble Lord. I hope that with the explanation that I have given, and in answering the questions, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I confess that I am not at all satisfied with the Minister’s reply. We are seeing a change in the law to put a financial penalty as an alternative to prosecution. As my noble friend rightly said, we are talking about some appalling examples, which would make the likes of Rachman blush, if he were still around, of abuse of tenants and appalling housing conditions. What is effectively being said in the legislation is: you can buy out of the consequences of that appalling behaviour by an unspecified fine—unspecified in the Bill; I appreciate that there is scope.
The behaviour is worse, in many respects, than many of the offences that are routinely dealt with in the courts in terms of the impact on citizens. It is simply not good enough to allow rogue landlords to escape with a financial penalty but without the stigma of being convicted of a criminal offence. I urge the noble Lord to consult again his ministerial colleagues, because I agree with my noble friend that we should seek on Report to reverse the current position. It will not take long, but my goodness it is important. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Overcrowding in shared residential buildings
(1) Local authorities may set limits for the number of residents that may lawfully reside in each rented property in a shared residential building.(2) Local authorities may set limits under subsection (1) for each relevant rented property whenever the contract for renting the property changes at any point after the day on which this section is brought into effect.(3) If a complaint is made to a local authority about overcrowding in a rented property for which a limit has been set under subsection (1), the local authority may investigate whether the limit is being exceeded and, if so, order the landlord of the property to take action to end the overcrowding.(4) Where the local authority orders a landlord to take action under subsection (3), the local authority may charge the landlord a fee to cover the reasonable costs of the investigation and action undertaken by the local authority.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, my commercial interest is on the register. I have also owned a flat for 29 years, which has mainly been lived in by family or let. I pay tribute to the Public Bill Office, which has been very helpful in preparing amendments—something much more complicated than it seems—and the Library, which has been invaluable in coming up with information.
We have all seen overcrowding on television in the sordid garages in Acton where there is no water or anything else. But the problem is the same at the top end of the market because the Deregulation Act took away the right of councils to go into properties in London —it was only effected in London—and find out who was living there. The Government said at the time that new regulations would be required but we have heard nothing more about this. It is very important that we do.
I asked a Question for Written Answer on this and was told that councils have the power to determine how many people should be in a property and to inspect it. The difficulty is that before the Deregulation Act some authorities, such as Westminster, had six full-time officers checking on who was in a property, if it was overcrowded, and how long people were staying there, but unfortunately they no longer do. Other boroughs have always found checks costly and have not bothered. But we need to know how many people are in these properties.
I think I mentioned that, in the block in which my flat is, 10 Airbnb guests are often in a one-bedroom flat. That means 10 times more people using hot water than the 90-something year-old lady who is paying for half that water. It is therefore very unsatisfactory to have not seen hide nor hair of the new regulations. This has to be investigated, as set out in Amendment 84A. The issue is also addressed in Amendment 84B so I will speak to that as well.
This is about the right to manage. At last after all these years we now have the right to manage the block I am in but it turns out that, although you need only a 50% vote to get the right to manage, you need 100% to do pretty much anything else significant to improve things. You get to the point where fire doors are being left open and anyone can come in from the street. People in these blocks are abusing long-term residents, including the 90 year-old I have spoken about. There has to be some way of assessing these issues, so Amendment 84B seeks to change the percentage needed on the right to manage. It should be possible to have all these people known, so that if they cannot be there and are not aware of what is happening, they can appoint a proxy or authorise someone else to speak for them. It is very unsatisfactory to be in a position where you can see the overcrowding and the dangers, yet nothing can be done about it. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, is excellent. As usual she understands the issues about how people in the rented sector can be exploited, as well as the problems that can be caused to others living nearby. This proposed new clause suggests a practical solution.
The amendment would give powers to local authorities to take action when necessary on the number of people who may lawfully reside in each rented property in a shared residential building. We have all seen reports of severe overcrowding, usually of vulnerable people, in conditions that are truly unacceptable. The amendment would give local authorities a power to do something about that by setting numbers straightaway. I can recall a situation where workers in east London were in effect hotbedding. People would be able to sleep in a bed for a period of time and then it was the turn of the next person, so that at least two if not three people were using the bed in shifts. For such practices to be happening in modern Britain is an absolute disgrace, although I accept entirely what the noble Baroness said about this cutting across society. It does not affect only people living in sheds in east London.
The proposed new clause would give local authorities powers to set limits, investigate complaints, and the ability to charge reasonable costs for investigation and any necessary action that has to be taken. I hope that the amendment will receive a positive response from the Government, and I may intervene later in Committee once I have heard the Minister’s response.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On Amendment 84B, what would happen? It talks about the information being made available to members of the right-to-manage company but, once they have that information, what will they do about it? I do not quite understand how the amendment deals with the problem in terms of providing a solution.
I go back to Amendment 84A in the same group. One problem when local authorities get involved in dealing with blocks of flats in multiple occupation is that sometimes they hesitate to do so because they know that, if the property is overcrowded and someone has to leave, they are then responsible for sorting out the problem for that tenant. Certainly I get the feeling when watching those programmes that local authorities are a little careful in this area because they simply do not have any properties for people to move into. That is why in general we need to give local authorities far more substantial powers to deal with these properties. They cannot simply become the receptacle into which people in difficulties are put. They cannot just be passed on to the local authority, which is then responsible for housing them when it does not have any accommodation available. I say that against the background of other provisions in the Bill which are going to remove particularly vital property in London from the market.
All these things interconnect. I simply say to the Minister in terms of the previous provision, Amendment 84A, that the Government should write a new clause themselves that would put together a far more substantial package to deal with the problem, and perhaps taking evidence from organisations outside. It might be that they should consider introducing a separate Bill to deal specifically with this problem because it is one that has to be resolved.
To help me understand these matters, perhaps the noble Baroness could explain what would happen once the leaseholders have acquired the information. They must be given some sort of power to actually deal with the problem. We will be dealing with management committees in later amendments. Their members often have little power unless it is enshrined in the original lease, signed by every leaseholder, that there are responsibilities to be met.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, are there not already regulations about the overcrowding of buildings? I am sure that there are also regulations covering the sharing of bedrooms, particularly between young people. I think I am right in saying that under the age of 12, children of opposite sexes can share the same bedroom, but it is deemed undesirable beyond that age. In certain dwellings it is sometimes impractical to change that. Do we not already have regulations in place? I agree entirely with what my noble friend is trying to do, but I wonder whether the regulations we already have are being enforced as well as they might be.
Lord Campbell-Savours
If there are such regulations in place, of which I am totally unaware, how many prosecutions have been brought? I would bet that there has not been one anywhere in the United Kingdom. The reason for that is because there are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people living in homes where those regulations are being defaulted upon.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, there are regulations about all these things. There are fire regulations, regulations on overcrowding, spatial regulations and so on. The difficulty arises if you have a room in the sort of flat that one of my children rented at one stage. Changes can be made without the local planning authority or anyone else knowing about them. In that particular instance, what had been a two-bedroom property with a fairly large kitchen and dining area was converted into a three-bedroom property when part of that area was hived off, thus creating another bedroom. It meant that, in effect, three couples—six people—were sharing one bathroom, which was a trial in its own right. However, the third bedroom which had been hived off the kitchen and dining area had no direct access to the safe environment protected by a fire door, which meant that the people occupying that room were not safe, given that a kitchen is a potent area for fires to start because of cooking, electrical equipment and so on. I felt that the property was at risk and I told my offspring that, if they had to rent in that flat, for heaven’s sake not to rent the room off the kitchen but to take a room off the lobby.
A local authority has no real way of catching up on this kind of thing, particularly if the properties are relatively temporary lets. Often these are places which are let to students for a year or nine months at a time for the academic year. The tenants may not be registered at the property as electors because their university might have registered them, so there is no real audit trail to enable the authority to look into the issues.
I think that there is a real problem here. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, doughty campaigner as she is for getting these things sorted out—I support her in her intentions behind her amendments—should note that, nevertheless, to use a West Country phrase, we are a bale short of a stack on catching up with these issues in practical terms. That is the conundrum. Also, landlords might not be particularly interested in enforcing such a provision. It might be possible to deal with these issues through a body other than the local authority, but I do not know. However, there is a problem here which is creating situations that are hazardous and prejudicial to some of the people who are occupying these properties. I certainly therefore support the gist of what the noble Baroness has said.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Is there not great irony in the fact that, to get around this problem, we need more bedrooms? In London, the flats with the most bedrooms—the three-bedroom flats—are the very high-value flats that are going to be sold off under this Bill. It shows what a mockery this Bill makes of housing problems.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for her amendments, which seek to address overcrowding and unlawful subletting in flats in residential blocks. For reasons that I shall come to shortly, however, I do not think that they are necessary, since both local authorities and managers of residential blocks have sufficient powers to tackle overcrowding and associated problems. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and my noble friend Lord Swinfen, alluded to this. I will explain further.
I will respond first to Amendment 84A. Part X of the Housing Act 1985 already deals with statutory overcrowding, which it defines by reference to a room standard and a space standard. If either of these is contravened, an occupier or landlord may be guilty of an offence. Statutory overcrowding results if two or more people of the opposite sex aged over 10—I have a figure of 10, not 12—and not being part of a couple have to share a room. This is defined as the room standard. Statutory overcrowding also results if the permitted number of persons who can sleep in a dwelling is exceeded. This is the space standard, which is calculated by reference to the number of rooms available as sleeping accommodation and their floor-spaces.
Local housing authorities can use their existing powers to gain entry to a dwelling in order to measure rooms to work out the permitted number. They also have powers to require information about the number of people sleeping in a dwelling and to inspect, report and prepare proposals on overcrowding generally in all or part of a district.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, where a local authority considers that a property is overcrowded to the extent that it is hazardous to the health and safety of the occupiers, it may—and must, in the case of a category 1 hazard—serve a prohibition order under Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 on the dwelling. This prohibits the use of all or part of a dwelling for residential purposes, limiting the number of persons who can occupy it. Whether the overcrowding is actionable will be determined by applying the housing health and safety rating system, which provides a numerical score of the severity of the potential hazard. Those scoring highest are category 1 hazards, and the authority is required to take action. Hazards with lower scores are category 2 hazards and the authority may take action. In any case, if the local authority serves a prohibition order limiting the number of persons who can occupy a dwelling, it is a criminal offence to contravene the order by permitting more persons than specified in the order to occupy it. A local authority can recover from the landlord its expenses in preparing and serving a prohibition notice.
On the interesting point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about how one would find out about such overcrowding, it is subject to intelligence from local residents and the immediate area. It is fair to say that it works; no doubt on occasions it is hit and miss, but that is where we stand at the moment.
In deciding whether a dwelling is overcrowded, a local authority must apply an objective test and not its own perceptions or those of others. My noble friend’s amendment would enable local authorities to set standards in individual cases in addition to the national standards and existing hazard rating systems. This would cause confusion and uncertainty.
While I appreciate that flats that appear to be overcrowded can cause problems for other residents of the block, local authorities and managers of the blocks have powers to address them. For example, a local authority can serve a noise abatement notice if noise is coming from a flat, and the landlord or manager of the block can take action against the long leaseholder for such a nuisance if there is a condition or covenant relating to it in the lease. I am pleased to report that Kensington and Chelsea, where, I understand, my noble friend Lady Gardner is a leaseholder, was this year awarded £91,000 from a £5.3 million fund to tackle rogue landlords. This funding will work alongside the measures in Parts 2 and 5 of this Bill to ensure that local authorities have the resources and incentives to tackle rogue landlords.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Can the Minister put it on record that, when people buy their leases and turn them into a share of the freehold, they have the opportunity at that point to redraft the lease documents? That is the point at which they could input the restrictions required to cover many of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Parkes.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I note the noble Lord’s point but point out that the lease is a matter between the leaseholder and the landlord.
I hope, however, that my responses have reassured my noble friend that landlords of residential blocks and local authorities can take action to tackle overcrowding and problems associated with flats. With these assurances, I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I thank those who have contributed to this debate, but I do not think that anyone has any idea what goes on under the surface. In the particular block that I am speaking about, the head lease should have been made available to all leaseholders in the block. However, a loophole in the law allows someone to set up a sister company with the same directors and, after two years, to sell it to any outsider. This is what happened—the head lease was sold over our heads to an outsider. The outsider then has to decide whether or not they are going to be a good landlord. The tenants and residents tend to believe that the intention is to make the place so uninhabitable that we will all happily sell our bit of it, because it is a post-war block built in the 1950s, when building materials were scarce. It is not a glamour block, but next door three tiny houses have been demolished and a fabulous block has been built. It is nothing to do with the man who owns ours, but it is a private enterprise venture, and the cheapest apartment was £6 million. So the site must be hugely valuable. To the people living in the place it is no more valuable than when we bought it for, by comparison, pretty well nothing, but it changed our thinking completely: it is why we have gone for the right to manage, so that we can upgrade the conditions and protect the block.
I do not know whether that answers the point that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made. Would he like to respond on that?
Lord Campbell-Savours
The holder of the freehold to whom those leases are transferred must comply with the original leasehold agreement between the original freeholder and the leaseholders. You cannot simply arbitrarily change the lease. There must be, in the original lease provided by the freeholder when the block was originally purchased, provision to do the things that the noble Baroness is now objecting to. Maybe no one has read the original lease.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the noble Lord for that remark. I do not want to prolong the debate on this but I am certainly pinning my faith on the right to manage. If we can get a more realistic percentage of how many people are required to do things under that right, then I have hopes on that point, too—and I have an amendment tabled later on it. Meanwhile, I note what has been said but the difficulty with local authorities is that they do not have the money to do any enforcement. That is their one complaint to me. Kensington and Chelsea was mentioned. Westminster had a team of six and sacrificed other things to have its properties checked, but Kensington and Chelsea does it only if there is real pressure and the situation becomes impossible, because it is short of funds for enforcement and very limited in what it can do.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
On that very point, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, said that councils can recover their expenses. It would be quite useful to know what he meant by expenses. Are we talking about reasonable costs or full costs? If necessary he can obviously write to me on what he meant by expenses, but the point the noble Baroness makes is absolutely right: councils do not have the resources to undertake this work.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
As we are not getting a reply on that point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Cookham
“Administrative costs
(1) A tenant may make an application for an order that all or any of the costs incurred, or to be incurred, by the landlord in connection with proceedings before a court, residential property tribunal, leasehold valuation tribunal, or First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal, or in connection with arbitration proceedings, are not to be regarded as costs to be taken into account in calculating the amount of any administration charge, within the meaning of paragraph 1(1)(d) of Schedule 11 to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, payable by the tenant.(2) The application shall be made—(a) in the case of court proceedings, to the court before which the proceedings are taking place, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to a county court;(b) in the case of proceedings before a residential property tribunal, to a leasehold valuation tribunal;(c) in the case of proceedings before a leasehold valuation tribunal, to a tribunal before which the proceedings are taking place, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to any leasehold valuation tribunal;(d) in the case of proceedings before the First-tier Tribunal, to the tribunal;(e) in the case of proceedings before the Upper Tribunal, to the tribunal;(f) in the case of arbitration proceedings, to the arbitral tribunal, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to a county court.(3) The court or tribunal to which the application is made may make such order on the application as it considers just and equitable in the circumstances.”
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 84BA, which is in my name, and to Amendment 84G. These are, I hope, noncontroversial amendments which would level the playing field—which is currently tilted in favour of freeholders—for leaseholders.
Amendment 84BA addresses an irregularity concerning the consideration of recovery of a landlord’s costs from leaseholders as administrative charges. At the moment, a landlord can recover their costs for appearing before a tribunal or court as an administration charge where a covenant exists in the lease, without the leaseholder being able to ask the tribunal or court to consider the reasonableness of the costs, which they are able to do when the costs are recovered via the service charge. This is potentially unfair and can discourage leaseholders from exercising their rights to seek a determination that service charges or other payments are payable and reasonable, where they are aware that the landlord can recover his costs in this way through this loophole. The proposed amendment would enable the court or tribunal to consider on application whether it is reasonable for a landlord to recover all or part of the costs of appearing before it as an administration charge, where the lease allows this. At the moment, that cannot be done.
This amendment would therefore be similar to the existing legislation which enables tribunals and courts, on application by a tenant or leaseholder, to limit a landlord’s costs of appearing before a court or tribunal where they seek to recover them through service charges. This is not to say that a landlord should not be able to recover his costs, but rather that a tribunal or court should be able to consider whether it is reasonable so to do.
Amendment 84G would give leaseholders the right to obtain from their landlord contact information for other leaseholders in a shared block, for the purposes of obtaining statutory recognition of a tenants’ association. This may be relevant to some of the issues raised by my noble friend Lady Gardner. To put this in context, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 allows a tenants’ association made up of qualifying tenants to seek statutory recognition. Such recognition provides the association with additional rights to those enjoyed by individual leaseholders. Because this is a collective right, the relevant guidance suggests that a specific proportion of qualifying tenants should support the application before recognition of the tenants’ association can be sought, which means that leaseholders have to contact other leaseholders to get the necessary proportion.
However, it is apparent that leaseholders are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the numbers needed to seek recognition, particularly where they require contact information about absent leaseholders. This will not surprise my noble friends, given the well-documented increase in absent leaseholders and the growth of subletting. Putting a note through a letterbox, for example, is not a satisfactory way of achieving contact because there are no guarantees that the subtenant will pass the note on to the landlord. There is also no obligation on the landlord to pass on information. This means that a number of qualifying tenants are not given the opportunity to take part in the formation of an association, which is frustrating and potentially weakens the ability of leaseholders to exercise their statutory right.
This amendment to legislation which I fear I put on the statute book myself some 30 years ago—I clearly omitted to make it absolutely perfect—would address the problems outlined by requiring a landlord to supply relevant information with individual leaseholders’ consent within a given timeframe, thus helping those tenants seeking to exert their collective rights. I beg to move my first amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I shall be very brief: this amendment answers many of the points that I have raised and I strongly support it.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has raised one of the legacy issues derived from the way in which leaseholds are set up. I have a possible reservation about the impact of leaseholders exercising their right to manage, but the point he made highlights a particular mismatch here.
Landlords of landlord-managed blocks tend to have rather blurred lines when it comes to dealing with what exactly constitutes a legitimate service charge item. It is all very well if they are pursuing something that will clearly protect the service charge payers in the block—if it is a block—generally; it is quite different if the landlord is using the service charge to finance his pursuit of a particular tenant on a landlord/tenant issue, as opposed to a service charge issue. That is where the muddle starts to creep in. The way in which the service charge provision and its recoverability are set out in many old leases simply has not kept pace with the passage of time. We are stuck legally where we are because of how these things were done historically, perhaps during the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, when we did not have the same sort of concentration on ensuring that the rights of tenants, as the payers of service charges, were as adequately protected as they might be under modern drafting.
This does raise an issue, and the only thing on which I would counsel a bit of caution is long leaseholders who have exercised their right to manage. Would they get caught for part of the administrative costs of pursuing a non-paying long leaseholder in a block on a service charge item? Would they then suffer the same fate? Otherwise, it puts them in an exposed position. However, the basic premise raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young, is to me unassailable. Why should the generality of long leasehold service charge payers in a multi-unit building foot the bill for the landlord pursuing a particular tenant on a landlord/tenant issue? On that point, he is absolutely spot on.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I would like to bring a little experience to this debate. I was involved in an enfranchisement over getting a share of a freehold from leasehold. Although it was an enfranchisement, if I remember rightly, the costs were not payable by the tenant in the enfranchisement proceeding before the tribunal. Notwithstanding that, it is interesting to know what can happen in these tribunals. In the tribunal in which my residents’ association was involved, we were paying £3,000 a day for a lawyer. I remember sitting there one day during the inquiry. There had been a gentle chat in the morning and at lunchtime the chairman of the tribunal looked up at the clock and said, “I think we’ve had an interesting day and I suggest that we adjourn until tomorrow morning”. In the event that the bill had been payable, the residents would have had to share out the £1,500 costs. In fact it was not payable, because, as I said, it was an enfranchisement. In circumstances where the liability did fall on the tenants, the bill would have fallen on the residents. Ministers have to have in mind the fact that complications such as those can arise in a tribunal, where the chairman might not be fully aware of the costs of the lawyers representing the residents.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 84D, which has been put in this group. I have no problem with that. In my research for what I shall say, I also discovered quite a lot of involvement of the noble Lord, Lord Young, from a long time ago, which I shall come to in a few minutes.
The purpose of the amendment is to bring the tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall in line with other tenants of other landlords and their rights to buy. First, it repeals Section 33(2)(c) of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. Secondly, it repeals Section 94(11)(c) of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, concerning Crown land. I could read out the relevant clauses, but I expect noble Lords can understand what they are all about and if they want to read them, they can.
The amendment is also part of a Private Member’s Bill that I put in for the ballot last May. It did not come very high, so I thought it would be useful to raise the subject today, because it is relevant. The purpose is to examine the exemptions and immunities from certain Acts of Parliament which do not extend to the Duchy of Cornwall. Individuals who hold leases from the Duchy do not, unlike other persons who hold leases from private estates, have the right to enfranchisement. The purpose of the amendment is to give them the same rights as if they were leaseholders in England and Wales.
The first thing to discuss is whether the Duchy is a private estate or not. There has been an awful lot of debate about this. The Government, in many Written Answers over the years, have said that it is a private estate. On 9 June 2009, Bridget Prentice MP said:
“In general terms, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are private estates in that they belong to the heir apparent and the monarch respectively in their private capacities”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/09; col. 528W.]
In a Written Answer to Andrew George MP, on the same date, Harriet Harman said:
“The Duchy of Cornwall is a private estate that funds the public, charitable and private activities of the Prince Of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and Prince Harry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/09; col. 528W.]
There seems to be little debate about that. In a case brought by Michael Bruton on the Helford river, which I think is still being debated in a tribunal, having been to the European Court of Justice and back, the argument was that the Duchy of Cornwall did not have to do an environmental impact assessment on an SSSI over installing cages in which to grow oysters because it was a private estate. Michael Bruton argued that it was a public estate and the case has still not been resolved. While all this is going on, a large number of tenants are not able to buy their own houses, in contrast to those who are tenants of somebody else.
I will now give some examples from the island of St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly, which I think apply elsewhere. They go back to the origins of the 1967 Leasehold Reform Act, which said that the Crown was exempt from this particular clause, but a voluntary undertaking was given to Parliament through a Written Answer by Mr Fred Willey, who was Secretary of State for Land and Resources, in 1967. My noble friend probably remembers that. The Answer does not mention the Duchy of Cornwall but refers to Crown leases. It stated that the Crown authorities will agree to enfranchisement,
“except that enfranchisement will be refused where the house is of special architectural or historic interest … or adjoins such houses and is important in safeguarding them and their surroundings”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/6/1967; col. 42W.]
In 1992, during of the passage of what became the 1993 Act, a further Written Statement was made to Parliament, by Sir George Young, as the noble Lord then was, which was materially different from the 1967 Answer. He stated that, regardless of the exemption under the Act, the Crown authorities would agree, subject to specified conditions and exceptions, to the enfranchisement under the same qualifications and terms which applied by virtue of the 1967 Act and the 1993 Act to lessees held from other landlords. The relevant exception affecting the Isles of Scilly states that,
“where the property or area in which it is situated has a long, historic, or particular association with the Crown … the areas referred to in paragraph 3(iii) include the Off Islands within the Isles … the Garrison on St Mary’s and parts of central Dartmoor”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/1992; col. 19WS.]
This indicated that the 1967 test had been materially changed. There appears to have been no consultation about this and no debate in Parliament. Perhaps other noble Lords who were in the House of Commons at the time can correct me on this. It is not even very clear whether Members of Parliament voting on the Bill were aware that there had been a material variation to the Crown undertaking. It is not clear whether it was drawn to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Young—maybe he will have views or maybe he cannot remember it. For the Crown to claim that it was entitled to refuse enfranchisement, the Crown no longer had to show that the property was of special architectural or historic merit. It now became clear that if it was in an area which had a long historic or particular association with the Crown, that was good enough.
There is an awful lot more in this story, which I will not bore the Committee with now except to say that the situation is rather confused. We can sit or stand here to debate this and say, “It doesn’t really matter because there are many other things going on to do with the Crown and the Duchy which need careful discussion”, but we have to remember that people who have bought a lease are affected by this: if the lease has come from one particular landlord, they cannot buy it, whereas if it has come from another landlord, they can. That is very unfair.
As I think I have demonstrated—there are many other documents that we can use to demonstrate it—the Duchy in this case is a private landlord, so the argument that its tenants should have an exemption from the right to buy seems to me very unfair. We know that leaseholds are a diminishing asset—that is the whole point of them—but just because somebody owns a house on the Isles of Scilly, in Cornwall or somewhere else of no particular architectural merit, why should they be exempt? The only safe way is to remove this exemption, which is why I tabled this amendment.
Lord Beecham
I thank the noble Viscount for giving way. I entirely endorse the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I sympathise with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, who is temporarily not in her place, although I have some difficulties with the wording. Amendment 84E would insert a clause about sinking funds which states:
“The buyer of a leasehold … is required to make periodic deposits”.
She refers again to the buyer of a leasehold in proposed new subsection (4), but of course the leaseholder need not have purchased—
Lord Beecham
I am so sorry, I thought it was in this group. Has it been degrouped?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Perhaps I could clarify for the noble Lord that we are speaking to Amendments 84BA, 84D and 84G.
Lord Beecham
I apologise to the Committee. The group that I have includes the noble Baroness’s amendments. But if the groups were changed only this morning, perhaps I should withdraw my apology and confirm merely that I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lord Young for their amendments. I welcome the consideration of issues around the operation of leasehold, which I know are of interest to many in the House.
Amendment 84BA seeks a right for a leaseholder to obtain an order restricting a landlord’s ability to recover the costs of appearing before a court or tribunal as an administration charge. My noble friend Lord Young has raised an important issue, which others have also expressed concern about today, including the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. As the Committee will be aware, legislation already allows tribunals and courts to make this type of order where a landlord is seeking recovery of costs through a service charge. I should like to consider this further and I hope, with that assurance, that my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment.
I will now address changes proposed in Amendment 84D, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord said. As noble Lords will know, the Crown is not bound by legislation except where that is specifically provided for. The underlying exceptions to the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 apply to Crown land, which for the purposes of those Acts is defined as including the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, the Duchy of Cornwall and the interests of any government department. There are no plans to change the exemptions set out in statute.
However, the Crown authorities covered by this exemption have committed, through a voluntary undertaking renegotiated in 2001, that the Crown would, as landlord and subject to specified exemptions described in the undertaking, agree to the enfranchisement or extension of residential long leases under the same qualifications and terms which apply by virtue of the 1967 Act and the 1993 Act. These specified exemptions include property that stands on land held inalienably by the Crown, and where there are security considerations. They also include where properties, or the areas in which they are situated, have a long historic or particular association with the Crown.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Going by my own experience, if a statutory requirement was placed on the management company to forward correspondence requesting that information to the people who own the leases, particularly if they were abroad—in other words, if the responsibility was on the management company—following a request from the residents association, we would indeed get the names.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That is a possibility, and I will bring that into the considerations that we will undertake prior to Report. I thank the noble Lord for his point. I hope that my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will not press his later.
Lord Berkeley
I am very grateful to the Minister for his answer, but in the exception mentioned—when properties are of special architectural or historic interest or adjoin such houses and it is important to safeguard them and their surroundings—the definition of whether a lease could be given up is very wide. Many of the buildings which I believe are the subject of this debate are in fact 1960s houses. They are probably very nice houses but they are not in the same category as the Garrison or the off islands or anything like that. It seems that there is no appeal in this process. The Duchy’s decision is final and that is that—you like it or lump it. Can nothing be done about it?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I would not put it in quite that way. There are no plans to make changes, but the noble Lord will know that we are talking about properties that are considered to have a long historical association with the Crown. I will investigate further and if I can furnish the noble Lord with more information, I will certainly do so in the form of a letter.
Lord Young of Cookham
My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who took part in this debate. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, let me say that, indeed, I do not remember the background to a Written Parliamentary Question that I answered in 1992. My general impression was that the Duchy agreed voluntarily to abide by what was in the legislation. That was the background, which I think was broadly confirmed in the exchange, although there might be some minor amendments more recently. I am grateful to my noble friend for his benign response to my two amendments: the teams of Young and Younger seem to be on the same wavelength here. Against the background of the assurances that he has given, I am more than happy to beg leave to withdraw Amendment 84BA.
“Client money protection for lettings agents
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person may not accept money from another person (“T”) in the course of lettings agency work unless there are in force authorised arrangements under which, in the event of his or her failing to account for that money to the person entitled to it, his or her liability will be made good by another. (2) In this section “T” is any person who seeks residential accommodation which is to let, or who has a tenancy of, or other right or permission to occupy, residential premises; and a “relevant payment” means any sum of money which is received from T in the circumstances described in subsection (1).(3) In this section “lettings agency work” has the same meaning as in section 83 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (redress schemes: lettings agency work) and a “lettings agent” is a person who engages in lettings agency work.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument—(a) specify any persons or classes of persons to whom subsection (1) does not apply;(b) specify arrangements which are authorised for the purposes of this section including arrangements to which an enforcement authority nominated for the purpose by the Secretary of State or any other person so nominated is a party;(c) specify the terms and conditions upon which any payment is to be made under such arrangements and any circumstances in which the right to any such payment may be excluded or modified;(d) provide that any limit on the amount of any such payment is to be not less than a specified amount; and(e) require a person providing authorised arrangements covering any person carrying on lettings agency work to issue a certificate in a form specified in the regulations certifying that arrangements complying with the regulations have been made with respect to that person.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.(6) Every guarantee entered into by a person who provides authorised arrangements covering a lettings agent shall tenure for the benefit of every person from whom the lettings agent has received a relevant payment as if the guarantee were contained in a contract made by the insurer with every such person.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 84C is about client money protection. It would require every letting agent to have the money that they hold—belonging either to a tenant by way of advance rent or to a landlord as rent received or funds for repair or insurance—to be protected. In this way, even if a letting agent disappeared or went bankrupt, such money would be safe and available to the landlord. This client money protection is required of solicitors, other professionals, estate agents and, indeed, anyone else holding client money that belongs to others. It is what is needed for rents collected by letting agents on behalf of landlords. It is not the agent’s money and it should be held separately in a protected client account.
This is a big issue: there are hundreds of cases of letting agents taking money from tenants as holding fees, deposits, rent, service charges or even tax, but then pocketing the money. Sometimes, the long arm of the law catches up with them. Tim Glasson was jailed for 21 years for unlawfully and dishonestly keeping rent and deposits; Roy Jackson of Suffolk Letting stole £70,000 from landlords and Keiran Farrer stole £17,000 in rents and deposits, repaying neither the tenant nor the landlord. Similarly, Shirley Player was jailed for stealing £400,000 and Russell Baker was accused of taking £150,000 in deposits but not handing them on to either a tenant deposit scheme or the landlord.
This money is not going into the housing market. It deprives landlords of their income and tenants of their security. About 60% of landlords use letting agents to help to manage their property. Thus money for repairs and insurance, in addition to rents, is channelled through the agent’s bank account. This is not money for the agent’s services; it is due to be handed on to someone else.
The amendment would require the funds to be in a ring-fenced protected client account, in the same way as happens with solicitors. It is strongly supported by landlords as much as by tenants. It is backed by the National Landlords Association, RICS, the British Property Federation, the Association of Residential Managing Agents, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the Property Ombudsman, Ombudsman Services, Crisis and Shelter. It was recommended by the CLG Select Committee in the other place.
Reputable letting agents strongly support the amendment. As David Cox, who leads their professional association ARLA, said, client money protection is,
“fundamental for tenants and landlords to ensure they have peace of mind should an agent go bust or take off with their funds”.
A director of a large firm, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, which protects landlords’ and tenants’ money under a client money protection scheme, said that,
“all too often, rogue agents who do not subscribe”,
to such a scheme,
“misappropriate landlord and tenant funds … It should be compulsory for all agents to subscribe to a client money protection scheme”.
Savills—well-known to everyone in this House—urges the Government,
“to make it compulsory for all letting agents to have client money protection”.
We are talking about vast amounts of money handled, but not owned, by letting agents: probably £2.7 billion at any one time, perhaps £700 million of which is unprotected. In deposits alone, renters typically hand over £600 each, with no guarantee of its safety.
Amendment 84C, which would require all letting and managing agents to have client money protection, is based on similar provisions in the Estate Agents Act 1979. Agents would have to maintain a segregated bank account for clients’ money, with written confirmation from the bank that all the money in that account belonged to the clients. It would mean, importantly, that the bank was not entitled to combine that client account with another account or to offset the money in that client account for any sum owed to the bank by the letting agent.
We tabled a similar amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill and it seemed that the Government were almost persuaded. They came up with a compromise amendment of their own, which required letting agents to display whether they had client money protection. However, it has not worked and it was never going to work. As far as tenants go, they cannot choose which letting agent to use; it is the landlord who chooses. For a tenant, if a particular letting agent is handling the property that they already rent, or which they want to rent, they cannot shop around to find another agent. Their only choice is not to rent that property. They have no consumer power to change behaviour in the market. It hardly works for the landlord either. Many are small and non-professional and do not really appreciate the importance of client money protection until, of course, it is too late.
The Government’s transparency amendment, which became part of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, is fairly useless because, even before that change, every letting agent who had client money protection already proudly boasted about it, but that did not drive the rogues to follow suit. As we predicted, the amendment made little difference. It did not help tenants, who could not shop around, and it did not help landlords, who could only check at the beginning, and not later, whether there was client money protection in place. The other problem is that even the law that was put through is being flouted. We have numerous examples of letting agents failing to display their charges and whether they have client money protection.
When we dealt with this before, the Minister for BIS, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, claimed that client money protection could,
“make it difficult to encourage landlords to invest in properties”.—[Official Report, 3/11/14; col. GC 600.]
How wrong could she be? It is exactly the security given to landlords by client money protection that will encourage them to invest, knowing that the rents paid over to the letting agent are safe and sound. This amendment is wanted by tenants and is particularly wanted by landlords; it is also strongly supported by reliable letting agents. I beg to move.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment, to which my name is attached. I declare my interest as chairman of the advisory board of the Property Redress Scheme, which has been mentioned in passing.
It seems very little to ask, in legislating for housing, to require letting agents to have a protection scheme in place for moneys received by them in their course of business from tenants, prospective tenants and anyone who is renting or seeking a place to rent. It has been estimated—I always wonder how these estimates are arrived at—that letting agents hold about £2.7 billion in client funds, yet if the agent has not elected voluntarily to obtain cover, landlord and tenant can lose their money. If disaster strikes in the form of an agent going bust or running off with the loot, under this amendment the landlord and tenant would be covered. The amendment does not require government underwriting, so the Chancellor does not need to amend the Budget. The cover could be provided by the users; this would supplement any award under any one of the redress schemes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has said, we are not asking for reinvention of the wheel. Section 16 of the Estate Agents Act 1979 already provides protection in the course of sale and purchase transactions.
Client money protection is of course operated by the travel industry. Travel agents in the UK are required by law to be a member of an independent client money protection scheme that uses ABTA or ATOL. Many of us may have had to use these in the past—I certainly have. When you pay for your travel, your payment to the agent is protected by ABTA or ATOL against the agent going bust or going walkabout with your holiday money. You claim against ABTA or ATOL rather than against the travel agent. This amendment asks that what is the norm for the travel industry, just for going on holiday, is also used for letting agents—for most people, the property that they own or seek to let is much more important—and that there should be compulsory protection for rents, deposits or moneys held, even moneys for repairs.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and my noble friend Lord Palmer. I hope that noble Lords will not read anything into my very brief appearance here on the Front Bench.
We have heard a little about some of the figures. Back in 2012, Reading University carried out a survey that showed that some £23 billion a year was paid in rent and that in a year some £6 billion to £10 billion was held by agents after being collected by them on behalf of landlords. However, as my noble friend Lord Palmer points out, a more recent survey shows that, at any one time, some £2.7 billion is held by letting agents. The amendment is about the protection of that money.
It is worth reflecting on what eminent people have said about this issue. In July 2013, the Property Ombudsman felt moved to say something about client money protection under the heading:
“Client Money Protection Is a Necessity for the UK Lettings Market”.
He said:
“'We need an even playing field for lettings. All agents are required to hold client money in a separate Clients Account but there is no current requirement to have those funds insured against unlawful use or fraud, which is why”,
client money protection,
“is crucial for landlords and tenants”.
He went on to say that client money protection,
“is not a duplication of any deposit scheme or professional indemnity cover. It goes beyond that and provides landlords with the peace of mind they need to know that the rent collected by an agent is protected”.
As we know, many good agents and trade bodies, such as the Association of Residential Letting Agents and the UK Association of Letting Agents, recognise the importance of this and provide necessary protection for their members. Sadly, however, some do not.
Back in 2013, the Property Ombudsman surveyed some 8,000 lettings branches and discovered that, while 80% had client money protection, 20% did not. The ombudsman concluded:
“My personal viewpoint would be to question why a letting agent would not support CMP. In the absence of any regulation … agents themselves need to take proactive steps to show landlords and tenants that they have taken out the necessary cover to protect rental income”.
However, it is very difficult indeed for the vast majority of agents—those who provide client money protection—to persuade the others to do so. It is also difficult for them to run the necessary publicity campaign to warn landlords or would-be landlords and the public of the need to choose an agent who provides that protection.
Of course, agents are helped to some extent by the new transparency rules, which are being enforced by local authorities; I have no doubt that the Minister will refer to that in his response. These require the publication of the breakdown of the fees that agents charge to tenants and landlords, the redress scheme that they belong to and a statement of whether they are a member of a client money protection scheme. I recognise that there are many such schemes—again, no doubt, the Minister will refer to schemes such as SAFEagent and CM Protect. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, points out, there is no evidence to suggest—and the vast majority of agents agree with her—that those schemes alone will provide the level of protection that is needed.
Earlier in our deliberations on this legislation, during our discussion of zero-carbon homes, the Government said that by opposing the introduction of tighter energy efficiency standards they were protecting housebuilding businesses; they said that they were stopping the overregulation of housebuilders. I was able to point out at the time that the housebuilders themselves supported the introduction of the regulation. We have a similar case here. It is instructive to learn what Mr Brandon Lewis said in response to such an amendment when this matter was discussed in another place. He said:
“We want to ensure that we have a strong and thriving private rented sector that is not tied up in excessive regulation. Requiring agents to pay to belong to a client money protection scheme would force honest agents to buy insurance against the risk that they themselves were fraudulent, when, as the hon. Lady said, the vast majority of agencies are not. Introducing a mandatory client money protection scheme at this point would be a step too far and would overburden a market that is perfectly capable of self-regulation”.
That is slightly odd, coming from a Minister who is imposing a large number of regulations in the Bill. However, it is much more bizarre that in this case, just as with zero-carbon homes, the industry itself is pressing the Government to introduce regulation.
It was the Association of Residential Letting Agents that drafted the amendment before us today to protect money received from clients and held by agents, such as rent due to landlords. The Government claim that the only reason for rejecting the amendment is that it would overburden the industry, but given that the industry wants it imposed on itself, I hope that the Government will drop their opposition. I hope that when the Minster responds he will reflect on the other thing that Mr Brandon Lewis said during his response to a similar amendment in another place. He went on to say, rather indicating that even he is a bit worried about the situation:
“However, in May 2016 we will review the impact of the transparency measures that were put in place only recently. At that stage, I will take due consideration of whether any further action is needed”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 10/12/15; col. 719.]
We see yet again another example of the Government being prepared to consider something after we have finished our deliberations on this legislation. I urge the Minister to reflect on the fact that the agents themselves want to see an amendment such as this in place. I hope that the Minister will support, if not the precise wording of the amendment, something along these lines.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, it gives me considerable pleasure to be responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who will probably remember only too well that not so long ago we debated a number of Bills with some vigour. This amendment would introduce provisions under which cover for money received or held by lettings agents in the course of business, generally known as client money protection, would be mandatory. I hope that at the end of my remarks I can offer a little light at the end of the respective tunnels for particular Lords, if I may put it that way.
I am aware of some support within the housing sector for this measure. That has been reflected in interventions from the noble Lords, Lord Palmer and Lord Foster. But I am concerned that requiring lettings agents to belong to a client money protection scheme will introduce burdens and costs into the sector that could have implications for rent levels. Instead, this Government’s approach is to encourage lettings agents to adopt client money protection without the need for regulations. I shall explain.
We have already legislated through the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to require lettings agents to be transparent about whether they offer client money protection. Transparency raises consumer awareness and encourages landlords and tenants to shop around and choose an agent based on the level of service that it provides. I recognise the importance of client money protection. This is why in our guide on how to rent we champion the SAFEagent scheme—a kitemark scheme, in effect. This helps landlords and tenants easily to identify agents that offer this protection by the display of the SAFEagent mark. I accept that participation is voluntary but estimate that at least two-thirds of agents already offer client money protection. At the moment, to introduce mandatory client money protection would be a step too far and overburden a market that is perfectly capable of self-regulation. The balance of regulation for lettings agents is now about right. We need to allow time for the transparency measures to which the noble Lord, Lord Foster, alluded to bed in.
We shall review the impact of the transparency measures later this year. I reassure all noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that this review will be taken seriously and that we intend to work closely with our industry partners and representative groups to develop this review. I hope that this explanation reassures noble Lords and that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
What is the Government’s logic? The Minster has said how good money protection schemes are, how everyone feels reassured by them and how many people—landlords and others, lettings agents in particular—subscribe to them. So, as the Minister said, they are good. If it is good to be voluntary, why is it not even better to be compulsory? The compulsory element sweeps up the bad landlords. The Minister is talking about the good landlords who use lettings agents. The idea of compulsion would be to deal with those who are not at the moment helping protect tenants and landlords. The logic in not making a successful voluntary scheme compulsory is lacking.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I appreciate that the noble Lord feels strongly about this, but as explained earlier, at the moment we feel that we have got the balance right. I have explained that the review will aid us further by providing greater intelligence. Further regulation could deter lettings agents and make it difficult to encourage landlords to invest in properties. This is what this Bill is about—freeing up the market to ensure that the supply of housing for rent helps to meet the country’s urgent housing needs and demand.
Lord Foster of Bath
The Minister is suggesting that the introduction of measures proposed in this amendment would increase costs on letting agents. That is true. I have looked at the costs of such insurance schemes as are currently available. We know that the Minister says three-quarters of lettings agents have already entered such schemes. I believe that it is almost 80%. Will the Minister share with the House, either from figures in his brief or by writing subsequently, the Government’s estimate of the cost of the introduction of the scheme, not to the 80% that have taken it up but to 100%, and of its impact on rent levels?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Yes, indeed. I shall make two points arising from the noble Lord’s question. We believe that the balance is right also because we want to encourage a market whereby customers or people who wish to rent have the opportunity to shop around and to go to those agents where there is a kitemark scheme and reassurance in terms of their level of service. We believe that the market will weed out those without that. To answer the question on the money involved, agents typically pay an annual levy of around £300 to join a scheme. The noble Lord probably has these figures himself. This forms part of a central pot of money that can be used to pay successful claims by landlords and tenants.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I thank the Government Front Bench for allowing us to take this amendment at this stage and apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and my noble friend Lord Rosser. The reason is that between 2 pm and 3 pm this afternoon I am completing my house purchase and I will have the keys at 3 pm. That is utterly relevant to this debate because the money was certainly in my solicitor’s account at 2 pm. I am hoping that by 3 pm it will be in the account of the seller and I am completely confident that that money in the solicitor’s account is safe.
It will not go through estate agents—estate agents hold very little in client accounts. You pay almost nothing to the estate agent. The seller will have to give them a percentage of the sale, but it is very small. But the amount that tenants pay to lettings agents is enormous. So under an earlier Act, client money protection is essential for estate agents, who hardly handle any client money, but not obligatory for lettings agents who handle an enormous amount. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, again says that tenants can shop around. They cannot. In London, you are lucky to find anywhere to live. The idea that as a tenant you would shop around for your lettings agent, let alone the property, is, I am afraid, unrealistic.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for his intervention. I have to confess that when I went on holiday I had not realised that my money was protected, but there it is. We make it essential for holiday firms and estate agents, but somehow for lettings agents this £300 to safeguard tenants’ and landlords’ money is a step too far.
I hope that the Minister was not saying that he wants even more lettings agents coming in—lettings agents who would not protect their clients’ money. I think that that is what he is saying. He is saying that he wants more people to come in as lettings agents, but without requiring them to protect their clients’ money. That sounds to me like a charter for more rogue “set up today, take the clients’ money tomorrow” lettings agents.
Despite the Minister’s firm response, I hope that the Government will think about this again. We will clearly bring it back on Report. I am not threatening anything but I think he knows how much support it will have. Instead of having to go down that route, I ask the Minister whether he will be willing to meet me, the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and perhaps some other noble Lords to talk about this, as I do not feel that the Government are taking the right position here. For the record, I saw a very healthy nod from the Minister there. So I thank him for that and apologise to the Committee for having to get my new key at 3 pm. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2016
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bates
That the draft Order laid before the House on 22 February be approved.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the International Sikh Youth Federation, which I shall refer to as the ISYF, is a separatist movement committed to the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state in the Punjab region of south Asia, and was established in the 1980s. The ISYF’s attacks have, in the past, included assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, mainly directed against Indian officials and Indian interests. The ISYF has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK since March 2001. The decision to proscribe it was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of available information, and it was approved by Parliament. It is clear that the ISYF was concerned in terrorism at that time.
Having reviewed with other countries what information is available about the current activities of the ISYF, after careful consideration the Home Secretary has concluded that there is now not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that the ISYF is currently concerned in terrorism as defined by Section 3(5) of the Terrorism Act 2000. Under that section, the Home Secretary has the power to remove an organisation from the list of proscribed organisations if she believes that it no longer meets the statutory test for proscription. Accordingly, the Home Secretary has brought this order before the House and, if it is approved, it will mean that being a member of, or providing support to, this organisation will cease to be a criminal offence on the day that the order comes into force.
The decision to deproscribe the ISYF was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of available information. As noble Lords will appreciate, it would not be appropriate for us to discuss any specific intelligence that informed the decision-making process.
The Government do not condone any terrorist activity, and deproscription of a proscribed group should not be interpreted as condoning any previous activities of this group. The British Government were always clear that the ISYF was a brutal terrorist organisation. Groups that do not meet the threshold for proscription are not free to spread hatred, fund terrorist activity or incite violence as they please, and the police have comprehensive powers to take action against individuals under the criminal law.
We are determined to detect and disrupt all terrorist threats, whether home-grown or international. Proscription is just one tool in the considerable armoury at the disposal of the Government, the police and the Security Service to disrupt terrorist activity.
The Government continue to exercise the proscription power in a proportionate manner, in accordance with the law. We recognise that proscription potentially interferes with an individual’s rights—in particular, the rights protected by Article 10 on freedom of expression and Article 11 on freedom of association in the European Convention on Human Rights—and so should be exercised only where absolutely necessary. A decision to deproscribe is taken only after great care and consideration of a case, and it is appropriate that it must be approved by both Houses. If agreed, the order will come into force on 18 March. I beg to move.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his explanation of the background to, and purpose of, the order. As he said, it amends the Terrorism Act 2000 by removing the International Sikh Youth Federation from the list of proscribed organisations, meaning that, if the order is passed, it will no longer be proscribed as an organisation concerned in terrorism within the meaning of Section 3(5) of the Act.
As the Minister said, the international Sikh Youth Federation was added to the list of proscribed organisations under an order in 2001. Proscription has a number of consequences. These include it becoming a criminal offence to belong to or invite support for the organisation, or to arrange a meeting in support of the organisation. It also means that the financial assets of the organisation become terrorist property and can be subject to freezing and seizure.
Under the terms of the Terrorism Act 2000, a proscribed organisation, or any person affected by the proscription of the organisation, can apply to the Secretary of State for deproscription. If the application is refused, the applicant may appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. According to the Explanatory Memorandum, the Secretary of State has received such an application for the deproscription of the International Sikh Youth Federation and has now decided that there is insufficient information to conclude that the group remains concerned in terrorism.
The application was made by three members of the Sikh community in early February last year. It should have been dealt with within 90 days, but was not since the response was not made until the end of July last year. The response was to the effect that the Secretary of State still had a reasonable belief that the International Sikh Youth Federation was concerned in terrorism, but no reasons were given.
The applicants appealed on the basis that the Government had not given any reasons for the refusal to deproscribe, contrary to the rule of law, and that the ISYF was not concerned in terrorism. The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission directed the Home Secretary to provide reasons to support her position. However, on the day that the reasons and evidence were due, the commission was told that the Home Secretary would not now defend her decision but would lay an order for deproscription, which is what we have in front of us today.
Of course, the inevitable question that has been asked is what new information had come to light between the end of July, when the Home Secretary declined the application for deproscription, and the decision at the door of the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission some six months later not to defend that decision—new information that could not have been known or found out at the time of the decision at the end of July, over which the Home Secretary said there had been extensive consideration and a full assessment of the available information.
There is a feeling in some quarters that being required to provide reasons for the decision not to deproscribe may have been a not insignificant factor behind the very different decision then made by the Home Secretary to lay an order for deproscription. I have no doubt that the Minister will wish to respond to that point. Perhaps he could also say, without disclosing its nature or content, whether significant new information became available for the first time between the end of July 2015 and December 2015 which proved a key factor in reaching the very different conclusion from that reached in July: that the International Sikh Youth Federation should no longer be proscribed.
The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation has previously suggested that once an organisation has been proscribed, there should be a review of that decision within specified time limits to ensure that it continues to be justified and necessary. Since proscription is currently for an indefinite time, are the Government now looking at adopting a procedure and process along the lines suggested by the independent reviewer, and to which I have just referred?
Lord Bates
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions. I will try to respond to them in the order in which they were asked.
The noble Lord’s first question was about the changes that occurred between July, when the application was considered, and December when it was about to be presented to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. Following careful consideration of the available evidence, the Home Secretary decided to maintain proscription of the group in July on the basis that she considered that the evidence demonstrated that the group remained concerned in terrorism. However, in December 2015, having further reviewed with other countries the available information about the current activities of the ISYF, after careful consideration the Home Secretary concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that the ISYF was currently concerned in terrorism, as defined by Section 3(5) of the Act.
The Home Secretary considers various pieces of open-source material—the noble Lord asked about the nature and content of the material—when determining whether a group is engaged in terrorism, but she also considers material obtained via the intelligence agencies. Of course, as the noble Lord suggested, it would not be appropriate to discuss the specific material that informed the decision-making process, particularly details of the information reviewed and how this altered the assessment of the IYSF’s current activities. We always seek to present as much information as we can, but I cannot comment on matters relating to intelligence.
The noble Lord asked about David Anderson’s concerns. Clearly, David Anderson is a very well-respected adviser to the Government on terrorism legislation and in fact we are dealing with a lot of his recommendations in another context on other legislation. We look very closely at his proposals. David Anderson had stated that,
“the Home Secretary had … agreed to a process for deproscribing groups that no longer met the statutory test, and that a preliminary analysis had unearthed 14 groups that may be in this category”.
While it is not government policy to provide a running commentary on any proscribed organisation, I can confirm that officials did not recommend that the ISYF should be deproscribed at that time.
Under the current regime, the organisation or any person affected by proscription can submit a written application to the Home Secretary requesting that she considers whether a specified organisation should be removed from the list of proscribed organisations. We believe that addresses the noble Lord’s concern as to whether there should be a sunset clause in relation to proscription matters.
In respect of the possible impact of proscription and the points raised by the Sikh Federation in relation to visa and citizenship applications, the Home Secretary has to be satisfied that an individual seeking citizenship meets the statutory requirement for citizenship and is of good character. A range of issues is considered when determining whether an applicant meets this test and an individual’s current or former membership of a proscribed organisation may well be a factor as well as the individual’s specific activities.
The noble Lord raised an important point about the nature of the relationship with the Sikh community within the UK. This is, of course, extremely important. In relation to the point about India, I can say without hesitation that diplomatic pressure did not lead to the ban on the ISYF having been maintained since 2001. Proscription of a group can remain only if there is compelling evidence to support a reasonable belief that it is currently concerned in terrorism as required under Section 3(5) of the Act.
Regarding engagement with the Sikh community, I do not want at this stage to expand the deproscription debate into a broader one on engagement with other organisations. The focus of our discussion should be deproscription, which is quite distinct from other areas of government engagement.
The noble Lord asked whether we intended to engage with other countries. We engage with other countries in considering whether an organisation should be proscribed or deproscribed. It is an important part of the process and we will inform other countries with an interest in this deproscription of our decision.
In relation to the point about relations with the wider Sikh community, we have some distinguished members of the Sikh community in this House and of course recognise the immense contribution they make to the wider community. We hope that any misunderstanding that may have occurred in the past can be removed and that we can have a more positive relationship going forward if this deproscription has been a barrier.
I do not want to convey in any sense that we did not believe that there was just cause for the then Labour Government to proscribe this organisation in 2001. There was clear evidence then that it should be proscribed, but we have now looked at it again and arrived at a different conclusion.
Proscription is not targeted at any particular faith or social grouping but is based on clear evidence that an organisation is concerned in terrorism. It is the Home Secretary’s firm opinion that, on the basis of the available evidence, the ISYF no longer meets the statutory test for proscription and it is appropriate that it is removed from the list of proscribed organisations in accordance with the deproscription process set out in law. I thank the noble Lord for his questions and commend the order to the House.
Housing and Planning Bill
“Sinking funds for repairs: leaseholds
(1) The buyer of a leasehold in a shared residential building with common parts is required to make periodic deposits of sums into a fund to be maintained and used for the purpose of making repairs to the building in which the leasehold property is situated.(2) The fund shall be held and administered by the person designated to fulfil that role by the leaseholders.(3) The sums to be deposited and the timetable for their deposit shall be determined by those holding rights in the shared building, and the collection of those sums may be incorporated into the building’s service charge arrangements.(4) The requirement provided for by subsection (1) applies to any buyer of a leasehold who completes the purchase of that leasehold at any point after the day on which this section is brought into effect.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, this amendment is self-explanatory, and people in this House have heard me speak before on the issue of sinking funds. It was drawn to my attention particularly by people who bought their council flats in the days of Margaret Thatcher. No sinking funds were set aside at all and, if you are a tenant in a local authority block, you do not have to pay for sudden repairs. However, the case I quote to the House is of a woman who has an income of £10,000 a year and received a bill, this year, for £12,000 for her part of the roof repairs. When I followed this up with the housing association that owns the property, it said the problem is that there are 26 people in exactly the same position. To avoid this, from the day that you own a leasehold, you should really be part of a sinking fund so that you do not suddenly find yourself threatened with losing your home altogether because you cannot find the money. What happens if she does lose her home? The local authority has to pick it up again, so it seems that the fund is necessary.
It is also very necessary and important that a sinking fund exists in private blocks. We do not have one in the block that I own a flat in and, some years ago, someone suggested that we have a voluntary scheme. The scheme came into force and we all put our money in, and it was great because it paid for all the repairs for the year—some minor and some less minor. Then, a new tenant bought a leasehold in the block and said, “I don’t want to pay a sinking fund; there is nothing in the lease about it”. They had to give us all back our money, whereupon, years later, we will be faced with another giant bill for a new boiler system or new central heating or something.
It really is so much better if people have a sinking fund for repairs, and it is important that this should be a possibility for people in local authority housing and people who have a right to manage, even if their lease does not have provision for a sinking fund. My aim is to put in a clause that would enable people to decide that by a majority. If a majority want it, it should come into force, and it should not be the case that it can be withdrawn at a later date, which was what threw our system into complete chaos, it having been done on a voluntary basis. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I sometimes think that the noble Baroness’s title is not really adequate: “Baroness Gardner of Leaseholds” would have been better than Baroness Gardner of Parks. She is an expert in these matters and deeply committed to improving the situation of leaseholders, and on that she is to be congratulated. It is fair to say that the aspirations in these amendments are to be welcomed. However, I have some difficulties with the drafting.
In Amendment 84E there is a reference to:
“The buyer of a leasehold in a shared residential building”.
However, not every owner is a buyer—they may inherit or be given the property, and so “buyer” is not the right term. That also applies to subsection (4) of the amendment’s proposed new clause. It is also not clear in proposed new subsection (1) how the requirement is to be made. Normally, of course, provision is made within the lease. The implication here is that, somehow, legislation should overtake the provisions in an existing lease, which I think is a somewhat difficult concept. Furthermore, proposed new subsection (3) says that:
“The sums to be deposited and the timetable for their deposit shall be determined by those holding rights in the shared building”,
but it does not indicate how many of the leaseholders would be required—I suspect that a majority is what is intended, as it is in subsection (1) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 84F. That needs to be tidied up.
Having said that, there will be a chance, if I may say so respectfully, to improve the wording of the amendment before we get to Report. I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to this and possibly work with the noble Baroness in coming to an agreed position. She has highlighted a significant issue that is having adverse consequences for many occupiers of leasehold properties; at any rate, those with common parts. Perhaps the Minister will undertake to look at that with her and others to see whether the Government might bring forward an amendment to meet the objectives set out here but, as I said, unfortunately with drafting that may not achieve them.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I do not like either of these amendments. I want to make it quite clear that I think they are wrong in principle. For a start, Amendment 84E states that the buyer of a leasehold “is required”—in other words, it would be mandatory. There are blocks of flats—particularly where there is self-management, as in the case of my arrangement in Maidenhead—where resident committees agree that a sinking fund is not needed. We simply agree to turn up the money when a large expenditure is required. A couple of years ago, we had to spend £80,000 on a roof repair, but we agreed in advance that we would not levy for it until the expenditure needed to be incurred. It should be left to people in blocks of flats to decide whether there is a sinking fund, because there are varying views. Therefore, I am against that provision.
I am also opposed to Amendment 84F, and I will explain why. It is being suggested here that a majority—51%—of leaseholders could change the terms of the lease. If the terms of a lease were changed in such a way whereby a minority objected, and that objection was so strong that they just become awkward, which is what happens, they would simply default on the payment of their service charges. You cannot divide leaseholders in that way. In the case of the block in Maidenhead, where we have shared freehold interest, every time we enter into major works—indeed, any works—we agree in the resident committee. Because we are also the management company running the organisation, in which I take a very active part, we make sure that everybody agrees. Indeed, we get letters or emails from them confirming that they agree to any change that we wish to make. The reason is very simple. We have people that live both within and without the United Kingdom. In the event that we were to take an action which in any way they found unacceptable, I know that people would say, “Well, I’m sorry. I just do not agree with what you’ve done. I know I was invited. I know it said that in the event that I was unable to be there I would be deemed to be in favour of the proposal”, but irrespective of that they would feel that they were being manipulated into taking a decision to which they object.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I would like to respond to the point made. I think it is very interesting.
First, I should have spoken to Amendment 84F as well as Amendment 84E, because the two are linked on the groupings list, which I had not realised. The situation as described sounds entirely different from my own personal experience. My experience is that people who do not live in these places at all—except maybe for a few weeks in the summer when they come from somewhere overseas—do not respond to any attempt to contact them whatever. If you end up with a sufficient majority of those people, you cannot get anything done. There is no money to put forward even for emergency repairs. In each case you are asked to pay your money in advance, before the work can go ahead. Often legal action has to be taken against someone who says, “No, I’m not paying until I’m sure you’re doing the work”. An instance in hand was that, as the building was old, we wanted to have all new windows at the front. We all paid our money for them. People came and put up the scaffolding and the windows were delivered. The council arrived and said, “Have you got permission for that?” “Oh no, we phoned up and they said you don’t need it.” “Oh yes, you do. This is a conservation area”—the building itself is not worth conserving, but it is a conservation area. So the windows were all taken down, taken away and thrown away. We paid for them but we never got them, which was pretty disastrous for everyone.
Other times when someone needs emergency work done on the boiler or heating systems, again the money is needed up front—and people often have to be taken to court to get it. They might claim that they had not been justifiably contacted, but with the right to manage there could be a contact address or a proxy for every single resident or owner in the block.
I went to a meeting with Peter Bottomley, who is in the other place, and someone stood up from the department there. They said that the department was seriously considering the idea that if you fail to respond in any way you would be deemed to be not opposed to whatever was suggested. I then came back to this House and tabled a Question on that and I was told, no, that was not being thought about. Now again I am told that maybe it is being thought about. I find it extremely confusing, but I am looking for some way whereby you can deal with non-resident, uninterested parties who would allow places to fall apart.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The answer is actually in the original deed. If on acquisition of the property and purchase, the original deed specified that a suitable majority was sufficient to take a decision and the purchasers signed up to that, they are bound by that. The resident association, or the management company if it is run by the resident association, would have that in mind when it took decisions. Both these amendments could be dealt with in terms of the original lease. In the event that a lease change is required, then you would need—to be fair, in my view—a 100% majority turnout, or proxy or whatever, of all the residents to take that decision to introduce these provisions into the lease. If that is done then it is fair, but to impose it on people who may be reluctant to accept it is quite wrong.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
The second to last point the noble Lord made was that you have to have 100%. The problem is getting the 100%. I have asked Questions in this House—I had the Library look them up and there must be at least six—and each time the Government have answered that it is impossible to get 100%, or that it is very easy to avoid getting 100%. All you need is a landlord who has a different interest to pay one person or own one flat in the block himself and he can prevent any action of any sort to improve or maintain it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
When the noble Baroness purchased her apartment, she would have done well to ask her lawyer to read the lease and explain to her what was in that lease; it would have precluded her doing what she is suggesting now.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
We have gone into this legally in great detail over many years, but the answer is no, you cannot amend anyone’s lease unless everyone agrees to that. That is why I would be quite happy with the 100% if one could be sure of replies from 100%. However, if the replies do not come one way or another, it is very fair that the action should be deemed to be not opposed. They would be given ample time. They would be able to produce—this happens in Australia and everywhere; it is very simple management—a contact or someone who could attend any meeting as a proxy. They can authorise a party. There is no reason why they should not be able to reply in some way. They either deliberately wish to be obstructive or they are uninterested. Either way, it can have a disastrous effect on everyone else in the block. You need only one person to be obstructive.
In the description I gave, the landlord himself—the head lessee—has now bought one. He is happy to take on every flat that comes up if anyone wants to leave. He is always offering to buy mine. The point is that to get that 100% is acknowledged to be impossible. Certainly it is very difficult. Even when you agree on the works to be done and everyone is prepared to pay their money, there are always a few who have to be taken to court and works never start until all the money is available to pay the contractor. This means that terrible deterioration can happen during that period. Of all the points that are in these two amendments, to me, that concerning the leaseholder who fails to participate in the vote is the most important. In that instance you are being deliberately manipulated or controlled by people who do not have enough interest to bother expressing their views.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner for her amendments. I agree that, as indicated in Amendment 84E, it is important to ensure that sufficient funds are available for the repair and maintenance of leasehold blocks, and that sinking funds built up over time can indeed play an important role in mitigating large one-off service charge demands. However, while well-intentioned, the amendment is unnecessary. It would cause conflict and confusion with the existing requirements and responsibilities under the terms of the lease, and does not address a range of important issues covered by the existing legislation. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, with his great knowledge, for being helpful in this regard.
The existing legal contract between the freeholder and leaseholder, which, as we all know, is called the lease, already provides for the collection of service charges for the upkeep and maintenance of a block. In a growing number of cases, provision is also made for an amount to be collected called a sinking fund. Importantly, where a lease does not already provide for a sinking fund, legislation makes it possible to seek a variation of the lease to do so.
It is sensible, clear and workable for the person responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the building to also be the person responsible for any sinking fund. To require the creation of a separately held and managed sinking fund administered by someone other than the person with legal responsibility for maintaining the block would create conflict and confusion with the existing lease, as would trying to dovetail it with the existing arrangements. For instance, if major work were required to the roof of the block, how would responsibility for the work be determined and how would any shortfall in the funds needed to carry out the work be dealt with? Who would be responsible for arranging the repairs? The current arrangements keep responsibilities and accountabilities clear, and do not fall foul of any legal obligations and responsibilities.
Importantly, legislation enables the freeholder to be held to account on service charges, including any sinking fund. Leaseholders have the right to challenge the reasonableness of service charge amounts being sought, whether for day-to-day use or towards a sinking fund. Existing legislation governing service charges also provides for a wide range of important issues, including the protection for service charges by deeming them to be held in a statutory trust, and that the money may be deposited only at a financial institution specified by the regulations. Under the amendment, it is unclear how the leaseholders would determine who held and administered the sinking fund, or how contributions would be determined and spent. The existing arrangements, in contrast, provide protection and a route to challenge the freeholder.
I say again that I recognise the important role that sinking funds can play, and that where the lease does not already provide for a sinking fund it is possible for either leaseholders or the freeholder to seek a variation of the lease to do so. This is the most appropriate route for creating sinking funds, avoiding unnecessary confusion and ensuring that appropriate protections remain in place. I hope that with this explanation my noble friend will agree to withdraw her amendment.
I turn to Amendment 84F. The leasehold right to manage is a right for leaseholders to take on specific responsibility for the management of their individual block from the landlord, by which I mean the freeholder, where they meet the qualifying criteria. That right can be exercised where a majority of qualifying tenants agree. It does not require or allow variations to leases. I understand my noble friend’s concern that once a right-to-manage company has been set up, the company needs 100% agreement from the members of the right-to-manage company before anything can be done. However, I am pleased to reassure her that this is not the case. In taking over responsibility from the freeholder for the management of the block, the right-to-manage company is required to carry out the repairing obligations under the lease, for the benefit of the leaseholders and the freeholder. This is the same as the freeholder would be required to do where they are responsible. Failing to do so could result in a breach of the lease. There is a requirement to consult on major works, but there are no particular restrictions that require 100% agreement before the right-to-manage company can carry out their obligations.
On top of this, the company is subject to company law in general, and the decision-making process, voting arrangements and appointment or termination of directors are set out in the prescribed articles of association. These are the RTM Companies (Model Articles) (England) Regulations 2009, which set out the objects of the Company. These generally require a quorum and a majority, but certainly do not require 100% agreement. I hope that this somewhat protracted explanation allays my noble friend’s concerns.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Despite the provision that the Minister has referred to, unless you secure the agreement of everyone involved, people often go into arrears and default. That creates problems within an association.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That is true, but there are restrictions in place to allow for that. It still works.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that the wording might be defective. The purpose of Committee stage, however, is that it is the topic that you are really discussing and you can always go back and correct the wording. So that is not really the issue but I appreciate his point, though I thought the Public Bill Office had done jolly well even to get it as clear as it is, because I found it impossible.
The Minister has not looked at the entire situation. He keeps talking about the freeholder and the leaseholder, but what about the head lessee—the person between the freeholder and the leaseholder? This is where most of the problems come in. The head lessee should not even exist because the head lease should have been offered to all the people in the block, but because of that company law loophole it was not. That therefore creates an extra intermediate tier. Where that happens, you are in quite a degree of difficulty. Our freeholder seems quite benign and willing to go along with things, except where he evidently agreed to set up this sister company and floated it off to an outsider as a leaseholder —the head lessee. It becomes very complicated when you get these extra layers in management, and it means that each process has to go to each person.
I cannot remember the detail, but something meant that until we got to the door of the court the head lessee would agree to nothing. We were applying to the court to deal with it without his consent because he refused to respond to any correspondence, making it very difficult for everyone. Right at the last moment, there was a message from his solicitors saying, “We agree”. What was at issue was nothing terribly major, but it was hard to believe that we had to go through those legal procedures to get a simple agreement about something.
Lord Campbell-Savours
May I make a suggestion to the Minister? There is a reform that would be helpful. Some freeholders require 50% of the residents to agree to the formation of a residents’ association that they are prepared to recognise, but unless they get 50% the freeholder will not recognise it. I would like to see, in law, some requirement for a lesser percentage. Particularly in blocks of flats in London, where you have large numbers of residents living abroad—despite the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—the fact is that you cannot get their addresses and therefore you are often limited in the number of people you have access to in order to meet that 50% threshold. Perhaps the Minister might ask officials to look at that. A nice little amendment to that effect on Report would be very helpful.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
That sounds like a good and constructive suggestion. Perhaps we can work on that idea. Certainly we are looking for some answer to this. I went this week to a meeting on the private rented sector at which the person speaking was the present Housing Minister. The one thing on which he agreed with me was that we need a property consolidation Act. I have been involved in Act after Act since 1981, when I took my seat in this House, and the way that each law amends the previous one and goes on to change something else is such a hotchpotch. We really should have a comprehensive consolidation Act. The problem is that the Law Commission does not do these any more, but if the Government were prepared to pay then it certainly would. That would save a huge amount of bother for ordinary people. If ordinary people cannot understand the law, it is very difficult to implement it and for people to feel satisfied with it. That is why I am all for a consolidation Act.
Meanwhile, I think that we have aired this subject fairly well. I am grateful for the comments from those who have made them, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, we move at last to Part 6 of the Bill, headed “Planning in England”. Some of us thought we might never get here—but here we are. First, I thank the government time managers for giving us some extra time at the end of this Committee stage, so that we can have a bash at dealing with Part 6 properly. I understand that a lot of the housing stuff that has gone before is extremely important. Nevertheless, we had feared that it would take over completely, and we would not be able to deal with planning in any sensible way. So I thank the Government for providing the time—even if that time will not, by and large, be conveniently arranged for a lot of us. Never mind.
As well as moving Amendment 85 I will speak to the other amendments in the group that are in my name. The planning clauses as a whole raise some important principles, and I am sure that we shall have some clashes of views on those principles as we go through Part 6. They also raise a series of the kind of issues that that House of Lords is, at least in part, here to look at—to try to understand what the legislation actually means, how it might work, and whether it will work. It is important that we look particularly at some of the clauses in Part 6 that were put into the Bill right at the end of its progress through the Commons, and have not been properly scrutinised at all. So I hope that we shall do that.
There are a lot of concerned people working in the planning system around the country who, on the basis both of my experience and of information provided by colleagues, do not understand how this is going to work either. The Government have been organising meetings, seminars and so on, but many people believe that the legislation needs looking at thoroughly before it leaves your Lordships’ House.
The amendments in the group are about neighbourhood planning. We are starting off in a fairly benign way on this subject, because there is probably more agreement on what is proposed in this part of Part 6 than there is on some other areas. The amendments relate to Clause 125, which is called “Designation of neighbourhood areas”, and Clause 126, which is called “Timetable in relation to neighbourhood development orders and plans”.
I have no doubt that all noble Lords in the Committee are fully up to speed on neighbourhood planning and what all this means, but it may be helpful to put on record at the beginning the fact that neighbourhood planning is one of the success stories from the Localism Act, which some of us here spent a lot of time working on five years ago. Neighbourhood plans are the main part of neighbourhood planning, and about 1,800 of them are at some stage from the initial inquiry through to adoption. That is a lot: the system is a success. We should be looking to build on that success, and where successful neighbourhood planning has taken place, to move it to other parts of England where so far it has not taken hold.
This is a complicated process. Five years ago some of us spent a lot of time trying to understand how it, and the legislation, were going to work. It is not easy to understand, because the legislation appears in a number of different planning Acts. Basically, the process has to start with a relevant body, which is either a parish council or, if there is no parish council, a neighbourhood forum. If there is no parish council, the neighbourhood forum has to be approved by the local planning authority—the main council. There must be a neighbourhood area, which the parish council or neighbourhood forum operates in, which is the basis for the local neighbourhood plan. In many cases, obviously, that is the parish, but if there is no parish, that is a source of discussion and delay.
Then, within that neighbourhood area, a neighbourhood plan is put together. This is the part of it that is very interesting, and sometimes quite exciting, involving residents and the local groups. The body that is responsible for the neighbourhood plan is the parish council or the neighbourhood forum. According to the rules, the plan must be submitted to the local planning authority for approval. Then there has to be a referendum involving everybody who lives in the neighbourhood area. That, again, is organised by the main local authority. Then, if the referendum vote is to approve—so far, in almost all cases it has been—the local authority has to adopt the neighbourhood plan as part of its overall local development plan.
If that sounds complicated, it is actually quite complicated, so there are within the system a number of points at which the local planning authority can, if it wishes—or just if it is not all that efficient—slow the whole process down. As I understand it, the purpose of these two clauses is to remove those impediments, or at least to speed up the process.
I drafted these amendments some time ago. I did it for two reasons. The first was a natural protest against the degree of prescription in the two clauses: effectively, they say that, in different ways and at different times, with all the usual specifications, the Secretary of State can do whatever he or she wants to do. That seems to me unnecessary. If the Government know what they want to do in changing the system, they should simply put that on the face of the Bill. Then, at least, it would be less complicated for people trying to understand it.
The second reason, of course, was to probe what the Government are intending to do—what time limits they propose, and so on. So I put some of that in the amendments. Since then I have seen a more recent document called Technical Consultation on Implementation of Planning Changes. It is an extremely interesting document, which has been circulated to local planning authorities and elsewhere, and it contains the proposed timetables for neighbourhood planning. I do not agree with everything in it—as the Committee will discover in due course over the next day or so—but the proposed timetables for neighbourhood planning are fine. Indeed, they are rather better than those I put in my probing amendments. The Government are doing better than me on this one, so good for them.
I hope that this afternoon the Minister will be able to put that timetable on the public record in the Committee. We understand that it is subject to the consultation process, so there might be changes, but it would be helpful to set it out so that at least it is there in Hansard and people can see what it is.
The reason why I raised the question of whether Clause 127 should stand part of the Bill was to protest against what seem to many of us to be two pages of unnecessary intervention powers for the Secretary of State. I know that there have been some problems over neighbourhood planning with some local planning authorities, but I do not think that the way to deal with them is to have two pages of detailed legislation setting out what will become umpteen pages of even more detailed legislation when the regulations provided for in almost every other line in these two pages are agreed. That is just a statement of opposition to doing it in that way. The important thing is: we need to get a better and clearer timetable for the neighbourhood plan-making process, set out and agreed in legislation, and then let us all get behind the whole neighbourhood planning process wherever any of us has any influence. I beg to move.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 87A in this group. Since I have been silent a great deal throughout this Committee—I must say that such silence, unlike at a wedding, does not always indicate assent, but it certainly does indicate consent—I should remind the Committee that I am leader of a London borough council which is a planning authority. It wishes to remain a planning authority and it maintains vigorously that local authorities, as the arbiters of local communities, should be respected fully at every level as legitimate public authorities. One does not always hear that language, sadly, from whatever Government are in power.
I well remember the lengthy debates that we had on the Localism Act, in which my then noble friend Lord Greaves was a very active participant. I also played a part. I am a very strong believer in localism and I did play a part in that Act. One of the points that I made repeatedly at that time, often unavailingly, I fear, was that localism can be delivered in many forms. My own council was a pioneer in 2010 in inviting local people to define their own communities—a process in which about 13,000 people took part—rather than simply following ward or parish boundaries. Since then we have established with local people 14 village and town areas within our borough, with very active community engagement in discussing and setting local priorities. It so happens that only one neighbourhood forum has been set up because that has been the will of local people. They appear to have been satisfied with the process that we have taken forward.
We have now begun incorporating and adopting detailed supplementary planning documents—we call them village plans—within our local plan, which reflect that dialogue with the local community following question times, walkabouts, open meetings, post-its, as well as formal consultations. It has been a successful and popular process in which thousands of people have been involved. Indeed, I had to leave your Lordships’ Committee last Thursday early to go to a public meeting in one part of my borough, which was launching the latest village plan. Some 150 to 200 people attended the meeting in a public hall; that is unusual, as I think anybody involved in local politics would say. So, there is enthusiasm.
I was very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss my amendment with my noble friend Lady Williams on the Front Bench. I entirely except her from the many strictures that I may have made at the start of my speech about Ministers over the last 20 to 30 years, since I have been involved in local politics. My main concern and reason for tabling the amendment is that the Bill, and specifically the intervention powers of the Secretary of State, are locked in to this existing single body of statute which is about a neighbourhood forum and a neighbourhood plan, as enacted under the Localism Act. That is one method of getting people involved—a very good and successful method, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly said—which is what we want to do. However, it is not necessarily the only method or in every circumstance the best method.
I freely admit that my amendment is not necessarily the best way. It may not be in the right form or in the right place. However, before statute and practice totally ossify and case law proliferates, establishing that there is just this one way of doing it—as laid down by departmental officials and enforced by the Secretary of State from above—and that everything else is inferior, I would like to see some protection for local authorities, and there are many. I do not claim any exceptional skill on behalf of my own, although I think it is been a principle applied by both Liberal Democrat and Conservative Administrations in my authority. Where local authorities have local planning documents in full, after full consultation, they should not find themselves snagged up on artificial challenge as a result of not complying with the specifics of statute in relation to neighbourhood planning envisaged in this single way.
All I am really asking for is some reassurance. Ideally, I would like to have it in law because ultimately, these things will be tested and challenged in law—I suspect by people who perhaps want to make mischief and do not have the overall interests of local people in mind. If it cannot be made clear in law, we need some assurance that this Government, at least—we cannot bind future Governments—recognise that there may be under heaven ways of doing good local planning and involving the public other than as laid out in the Bill before your Lordships’ House.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity raised by this group of amendments to discuss this business of neighbourhood plans. Perhaps I should declare an immediate past interest as the previous president of the National Association of Local Councils, now occupied very ably by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor.
The noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed to the primacy of what I, as a private sector operator, know as the principal authority for planning purposes. We should never forget that, fundamentally, that principal authority is the one that ultimately has to make the decision. It is informed by a series of neighbourhood plans where those have been prepared.
Localism is a great thing, but it has come in with something of a great rush into a world in which the neighbourhood construct—by that I particularly mean parish, town and community councils—has for a very long time been neglected in terms of resources, powers, authority and ability to do things. Here, we come to the issue of neighbourhood plans. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, pointed out, their administration is quite complex, as are the philosophical constructs behind them. Too often, I still meet people who say, “We have tried to do this neighbourhood plan but really what everybody’s concentrating on is making sure that we don’t get too many housing developments in our area”, so it is seen as a defensive strategy, which is perhaps regrettable. Because it comes with so much of the baggage of what is known as development control, which is essentially a rather negative turn of phrase, that is the inherent direction of travel and it is seen as the received wisdom.
It is not a quick process to turn this round so that people see this as an opportunity to take things forward and to generate a resource they could not otherwise have. This question of resources is one that troubles both the neighbourhood sector—if I can call it that—and the principal authorities. One thing that the noble Lord, Lord True, did not mention is that as soon as you try to step in and make good efficiencies at neighbourhood level, that has resource implications. It also requires officers’ time, which would otherwise be devoted to other things, and almost certainly requires cash outlay on things like mailing, drawing up and making documents available and so on.
The test that needs to be applied was in a question I put to one of the heads of our rural community council. I asked what he thought the main ingredient of a good local plan was. He said that first, people must be properly canvassed: rather than teasing out what they do not want, we must ask what really turns them on and gives them a buzz about their area. At that stage, you can start to peel back the skin of the onion in order to get at the truth. Unfortunately, because of what might be called the inherited philosophical direction of travel, that question is often not asked properly. As a result, we do not candidly canvass the views of the old, young, shopkeepers and businesspeople, and—maybe—the farmers, mums with children and all who would otherwise remain silent. One of the main problems with neighbourhood plans being declared unsound is that it cannot be demonstrated that that process has been gone through with rigour and care. This is an important set of amendments enabling us to discuss this principle.
I am in favour of communities determining their own situation, but if in a particular area they say the equivalent of what I believe is the current acronym— BANANA: ban anything near anyone anywhere—then the principal authority’s executive is going to have to come with a red pen and make themselves deeply unpopular, because there are certain Government imperatives. While these are particularly to do with housebuilding, they also concern the associated infrastructure such as schools, clinics, road improvements —never mind fire services and things like that.
These things are complicated and a community often does not have the voluntary resources. How many would have a private sector town planner, for instance, who had time to attend meetings and guide that process? How many would have people available to deal with the financial mechanics, so that the community can clearly state what benefits it expects and set this out in a constructive manner? These are highly complicated issues, which often require expensive professionals—I stand guilty as charged in that respect. Parishes and town councils do not have those sorts of resources.
It is all very well having a provision whereby the principal authority steps in, but there are still the issues of covering resource implications and achieving a candid representation of the community’s views to take the process forward. Those seem to be sticking points whatever is done. I hope the Minister will be able to throw some light on that.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, neighbourhood planning has been a success since its introduction in 2011. For the first time, communities have been able to prepare plans that have real statutory weight: neighbourhood plans have the same weight in law as the local authority’s local plan, and must be the starting point for decisions on planning applications. As the noble Lord also said, more than 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, representing more than 9 million people, and planning applications are being approved and refused according to neighbourhood plans. The Government made a manifesto commitment to support communities who have embarked on the process and to encourage more to start.
Under Clause 125, the Secretary of State would be able to use regulations to prescribe the circumstances in which local planning authorities must designate the neighbourhood area applied for. In the prescribed circumstances, the authority would no longer need to advertise, and consult on, the proposed neighbourhood planning areas. This will allow communities to start planning more quickly and will significantly reduce the burdens on local authorities.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but surely the noble Baroness is moving on to other groups. She seems to be responding to the ninth group. Perhaps I am making a mistake. If it is the right group, I beg noble Lords’ pardon.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I apologise if I repeat myself as I find my place again.
As I have said, this would apply only in rare cases. These cases would be when a local planning authority has failed to decide what action to take in response to the recommendations of the independent examiner or where the authority disagrees with an examiner’s recommendations and wants to modify the plan or order proposal against the wishes of the neighbourhood planning group, unless the modifications are to ensure compliance with EU or human rights obligations, or to correct errors. We anticipate that this power would be used only in exceptional circumstances. We have been very clear that communities and local planning authorities should be working very closely on the neighbourhood plan or order proposal throughout the process. However, we are aware, as the noble Lord suggested, that in a small number of cases there have been disagreements between groups and authorities. There is currently no mechanism to resolve these disagreements. In extreme cases those disagreements have blocked the progress of a proposal by more than a year, even though it is supported by the community and has been approved by an independent examiner. We do not believe that that is an acceptable situation. Regulations would set out the procedure to be followed when a request to intervene is made and the proposals for these are also the subject of public consultation. While this power to intervene would remove some responsibility from the local level, we believe that it is necessary in the rare cases that I have outlined.
Although I fully understand the good intentions behind my noble friend Lord True’s amendment, unfortunately we believe that it would diminish the ability of the Government to meet their manifesto commitment of speeding up and simplifying the neighbourhood planning process. The amendment would unnecessarily restrict and potentially even nullify the proposed power and would mean that some plans or orders could be indefinitely blocked by an authority or amended without the support of the community. However, I can assure my noble friend that we very much support and encourage local planning authorities such as Richmond-upon-Thames, which works proactively with communities to prepare other types of community plans. Indeed I congratulate Richmond-upon-Thames on taking such a comprehensive approach to delivering community-led planning through its series of village plans.
Neighbourhood plans are a powerful tool, because they become part of the statutory development plan, which is the starting point for planning decisions. They are subject to two consultations and must pass an independent examination and a local referendum before becoming part of the development plan. We believe that every community that passes the independent examination stage should have the right to request that the Secretary of State intervenes if that plan is blocked by a local planning authority, or amended in a way that the examiner did not recommend. It would not be right to restrict this power where an authority has adopted in the past, or says it will be adopting in the future, other kinds of supplementary planning document, and there is no guarantee that other types of documents are up to date or have the same level of genuine support as a neighbourhood plan.
We have learned from the experience of communities undertaking neighbourhood planning and believe that the proposed new power in the Bill is already limited to the right set of very specific circumstances. Indeed, the Government have further explained, in our recently published consultation document, that the Secretary of State will, in considering a request, consider the plan or order plans positively for local development needs, taking account of the latest evidence. Let me reassure my noble friend that the proposed power does not affect a local planning authority’s ability to progress other types of planning document where it is already working with its communities. I also assure the noble Lord that the proposed power does not enable the Secretary of State to intervene in any other stage of the neighbourhood planning process. For these reasons, I hope that noble Lords will withdraw or not move their amendments, and ask that Clauses 125, 126 and 127 stand part of the Bill.
Lord True
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will probably get the final say, because he heads the group. Having heard such kind words, however, it would be extremely churlish of me not to say how grateful I am to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I will make sure that the officers who have been involved in that process see what she has said. I am of course slightly disappointed, because as time goes by circumstances could arise whereby diversity gets snagged on legalism, and a single approach is in the end fraught with difficulty.
My only other comment—I do not expect a reply, although it would be interesting to get a comment in writing—is that a number of things that have been said relate to parishes and areas where there are clearly defined communities. For me, the really interesting challenge in neighbourhood planning—one which we are seeking to address—is in local urban communities, where it is much more important to get people involved and engaged. In urban communities boundaries overlap.
I will not detain the House long but I have an interesting example of this which I urge the Government and Committee to reflect on. There is a stretch of river in my borough—the only one which lies on both sides of the Thames—that has a lovely green area in it. We would like the many institutions in this area to work together in what we call a river park concept; that is part of our local plan approach. One part of that area, the Ham community, wishes to become a neighbourhood forum. There was a nascent dispute—I had no interest in disputing a neighbourhood forum—over where the boundaries were. In those green lands, not only did Ham have an interest but so did Petersham, Richmond and Twickenham. Yet the Ham neighbourhood forum was effectively saying, “We want exclusive control of this territory”. In the end, we agreed to the boundaries. One of the problems, however, with the legislation as explained in the Explanatory Notes, is that if the Secretary of State says that wherever there is a designation —particularly in an urban area—the whole area asked for must be designated, there may well be overlapping interests. Parallel communities, different villages and communities may have an interest in the same land. That is why sometimes it may be legitimate for the principal planning authority to say that they might withhold that land from the neighbourhood plan because there are communities and neighbourhoods that have an interest in it. As I say, I do not expect a response. It is quite a detailed point but a fundamental one, because real human communities do not have red lines around them: they have fuzzy lines.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful for the care and detail that the Minister has put into her reply. In most cases, when I read it in Hansard it will turn out to be satisfactory.
One issue that the Minister might respond to now, or perhaps afterwards, is that of designation. For which kinds of areas will there not be automatic designation? I understand that in most cases, particularly parishes—most cases are parishes at the moment—the application is for the whole parish, and that is very clear. What will the position be if the application is for only part of the parish, and not the rest of it? What will the position be if more than one parish applies together for designation as a neighbourhood area? What will the position be if—the obvious further complication—one whole parish is part of the neighbourhood area together with part of another parish? I should say that that is exactly the position in the area where I live. Anyway, that is a straightforward question and I will move on from it.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The questions raised by the noble Lord are subject to the consultation and bring up a number of issues. I will certainly write to him with the detail, if that would be helpful.
Lord Greaves
That would be extremely helpful. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 85.
Lord Greaves
“Promotion of neighbourhood planning in unparished areas
(1) A local planning authority which includes unparished areas which have not been designated as neighbourhood areas must, from time to time and by such means as it considers appropriate, take active steps to bring to the attention of persons living or working in those areas the opportunities for neighbourhood planning (a “neighbourhood planning promotion”).(2) A neighbourhood planning promotion must include appropriate means to promote and explain neighbourhood planning on a range of local media, including the authority’s website. (3) The authority must carry out a neighbourhood planning promotion if it has not done so within the previous three years.(4) In addition to the steps required by subsections (1) to (3), the authority must maintain at all times a section on its website explaining neighbourhood planning and in particular how to identify or set up a relevant body in order to make an application for the designation of a neighbourhood area.(5) In this section “unparished area” has the same meaning as in section 87(3) of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 (constitution of new parish).”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this little group of amendments—in moving Amendment 87, I shall also speak to Amendments 88 and 88B—is about the promotion of neighbourhood planning in unparished areas and a general duty on local authorities and particularly the Government to promote neighbourhood planning.
Amendment 88 is a way of sneaking on to the agenda, with the assistance of the Public Bill Office, which was extremely helpful as usual when it rejected my first efforts, the question of setting up new parish councils in unparished areas. We are talking about urban areas more than any others. Most rural areas, villages and a lot of small towns now have parish councils or town councils, whatever they call them. However, huge swathes of urban England do not have any form of parish council. The amendments are based on the view that parish councils ought to be pushed and promoted more rigorously in those areas.
The link to neighbourhood plans is that, although neighbourhood plans can be put through by two different kinds of qualifying bodies—a parish council or a neighbourhood forum, which has been set up and approved by the local planning authority in an unparished area for the purpose—almost all the neighbourhood plans which have been adopted are in parished areas. I am not sure exactly how many are not, but I think they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Of the 1,800 which are under way, the great majority are in parished areas.
The reason for this is quite clear. Parish councils exist. They are a body of people with links, networks and systems of knowing what is happening in the world outside. They have understood that neighbourhood planning is possible and, as an existing body, they have taken it on board. If there is no such body in an area, or if there are only community groups or community associations which are not linked to these sorts of systems, it is going to take a lot longer. However, it is fairly clear that neighbourhood planning can be as beneficial in unparished areas as in parished areas. In many of them, where development is being proposed in urban areas, neighbourhood planning could be very valuable.
The amendments raise the issue of what the Government are doing, first, to promote neighbourhood planning in unparished areas and, secondly, to get parish councils going in unparished areas. Do the Government know how many of the 1,800 are in parished areas and how many in unparished areas? Is there a way of finding out? As I say, I think there is a handful of adopted plans in unparished areas.
Since tabling these amendments, I was asked to attend a meeting with many of the civil servants involved in this part of the Bill—who I think were a bit curious to find out what all these amendments put down by Lord Greaves were all about—and I was certainly curious to find out what they had to tell me. A great deal of it was extremely helpful and I thank them very much for that meeting.
Since then, I have had a letter from, I think, the head of neighbourhood planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government. The letter has some very interesting and extremely helpful information which I did not previously know, particularly about neighbourhood planning in deprived areas and the efforts which the department and the Government are making to promote this. I will not read it all out, as it would take too long—and perhaps the Minister is going to tell me some of it anyway—but it refers to,
“Building capacity and take up in deprived urban areas by training community organisations to be able to lead neighbourhood planning in their neighbourhoods … Working with Community Organisers to use neighbourhood planning to tackle issues faced by communities in deprived urban areas”,
and so on. This all looks very good. I have not had time to look into it any further since receiving the letter this morning, but I shall be doing so.
The letter also talks about having,
“More powers for neighbourhood forums to become parish councils”.
It also sets out the legislative changes which have already been made—which are, in my view, not sufficient but are welcome—and talks about, in particular, speeding up the process by shortening the amount of time a local authority can take to complete a governance review. A local governance review happens when the authority receives a petition from the necessary number of electors and has to conduct a review as to whether to set up a parish council, more parish councils or whatever it may be.
The letter then goes on to the encouraging part:
“The next phase of work on making it easier to set up new parish councils will be to publish the updated DCLG Local Government and Boundary Commission … Guidance on Community Governance Reviews. This will set out the new legislation and establish the working principles to ensure the guidance becomes a living document reflecting the evolving devolution landscape”.
That sounds good, but does the Minister know when that guidance will be issued? This is taking us a little bit away from the heart of the Bill, so I will not say anything more about it, but I thank the department for this information.
Some of us will be urging the Government on in the hope that they will proceed with all due speed on this. Local democracy is extremely important and local neighbourhood planning is a way of developing genuine grass-roots local democracy and they will have our support in everything they do and we will continue urging them to do more. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, this is my first chance to speak on the planning aspects of the Bill today, so I declare again my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association.
Like, I think, noble Lords across all parts of the House, we are strongly supportive of the concept of neighbourhood planning. We had many discussions around it as part of the Localism Bill, and I have been deeply impressed by the commitment of so many communities to get involved in the process. This has been a success story from the last Government.
My noble friend Lord Greaves said earlier that there have been some 1,800 neighbourhood plans at some stage of development. Of course, many fewer have actually held referendums, and it is quite a task to move from initial expressions of interest through to actually having a neighbourhood plan in place. We want to encourage the process, and this group of amendments is about how we can do that.
Amendments 87 and 88 do just that, and Amendment 88B asks the Government to do a little bit more by looking at ways in which they might provide an additional contribution to the work of communities in developing their neighbourhood plans, because not having the necessary resources is clearly an impediment.
Lord True
My Lords, I follow a very great deal of what has been said by noble Lords opposite. It is absolutely fundamental that it must be right that you get more development and housing by a process of consent than by a process from outside. That is one of my objections to some of the other policies that are around and appear to be more developer-led than development-led, so I agree with that. I think that I should quit while I am ahead in this part of the Bill because, with my authority having been praised by my noble friend on the Front Bench, the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and even some from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, I might risk getting some kind words from the Front Bench opposite.
I have a slight difficulty with the amendment, because it gets into the prescriptive area and slightly snags on the point that I was making on the previous amendment on the Government’s one-club approach. If we put this in statute, it will relate just to the process under the existing legislation. All local authorities should have a duty to involve communities, to put out publicity and to get engagement. My slight worry with these amendments is that, if they fall into the hands of a department of state, we will get regulations that say, “Just publish what we want to do, not what you want to do”. So I support the spirit of the amendments, but I think that it is a duty on local authorities. In our case, we might find ourselves running two parallel publicity arrangements, although we obviously publicise the opportunity to have a neighbourhood forum. For that reason, I could not go along with it, but I fully support the spirit of where the noble Lords opposite are coming from.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord in what he said, and I hope that in my very brief remarks about neighbourhood planning I can reassure him that in this area there is so much enthusiasm at the local level that central government prescription is not really going to hold sway. That is what is so exciting about what happened with the Localism Act. It really has liberated local communities in so many different ways to take on and run local assets, to take on and run local services and, of course—as we have heard—to introduce neighbourhood planning. I intervene merely to express my huge enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, to share a couple of experiences and then to ask one simple question of the Minister, which may help provide information to the House that may help us move forward on these issues.
It is worth recording, notwithstanding what my noble friend said a few minutes ago, that we have already seen 126 successful referendums; interestingly, in every single referendum that has taken place the plan has always been passed, which is huge testimony to the work that local communities have done to engage the local community before the plan is finalised and brought to the referendum stage. I acknowledge of course the 10% figure we have heard which relates to the way in which those plans have often led to developments of housing, for instance, far greater than they were in the local plan. I have had the opportunity to see first-hand a number of examples where, as a result of local involvement, things that were perhaps initially not very acceptable to the local community have suddenly been embraced because the community has been involved and engaged in the detailed decision-making process.
In one case there was a plan to have a supermarket in a relatively small town. There was huge opposition to it and a neighbourhood planning group was brought together. Residents discussed what they wanted in the neighbourhood plan and eventually decided that it might be a good idea to have a supermarket after all if they could determine its location, the routes people would use to get to it, the parking arrangements, and so on. Eventually, a supermarket was included in the neighbourhood plan. It has been to a referendum and been accepted, and the supermarket is being built.
Back in February 2013, when I had the opportunity to engage with neighbourhood planning, I and the other Minister involved, Mr Nick Boles, went to a windswept Upper Eden in Cumbria a few days before the first referendum on the first neighbourhood plan was due to take place, when we had an opportunity to talk to councillors and members of the local community. We were under strict instructions from the civil servants that in no way were we to express a view on whether we were for or against the neighbourhood plan, which proved rather difficult for two Ministers who are passionately supportive of the principle. But we more or less stuck by that, although we both left wearing “Yes” badges on our lapels on the way out. It was exciting to see the first plan going through.
The crucial bit, which relates to Amendment 88B, was that only a few weeks following that visit I was able to announce a £9.5 million fund for a two-year period to provide more financial support to communities that wanted to develop a neighbourhood plan. To reflect the point in my noble friend Lord Greaves’s amendment, further money was then made available to give local councils financial support for their work in supporting and dealing with various aspects of neighbourhood planning.
We were also able to announce the establishment of the My Community website, which has subsequently been a very good source of information for people looking to develop their own neighbourhood plan, and after that there was also a scheme to introduce 40 neighbourhood planning champions, many of whom operate up and down the country; they are people who have led their own neighbourhood plan, local councillors, planning officers and so on. Members of your Lordships’ House who are interested in this matter may like to have a look at the recently established website, where these neighbourhood planning champions now share their own experiences and so on.
The reason I intervened, apart from perhaps to show my enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, was to ask the Minister a very specific question in regard to my noble friend’s Amendment 88. As various pots of money have been made available—initially, for instance, £7,000, now £8,000, potentially with a further addition of £6,000 in difficult areas to support neighbourhood planning development—the Government announced an additional pot of money for pilots for councils to look at best ways of helping to promote neighbourhood planning in their areas. They made £600,000 available and various bids were sought.
Since then, I have been unable to find any further information as to what has happened to that particular pilot scheme. It was designed to help us identify the best way of moving forward in promoting and supporting neighbourhood planning, which is the thrust of my noble friend’s amendment. So I think that the House would be delighted to hear from the Minister details of how the money has been spent, what sort of projects have been brought forward and what lessons have been learned from which we can all benefit.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the concept of neighbourhood planning, particularly where it takes a positive attitude to development in the area. I acknowledge that there is real potential both in urban and in rural areas. The noble Lord, Lord True, is right that we need to be a little cautious about the implications within urban areas. I can best illustrate that from the ward that I represent in Newcastle. It has 18 or 19 discernible communities within it and I think now nine residents associations, each with its own particular perspective on what is going on.
It is not just a question of planning; it is a question of involving the community in a whole range of issues, be it social care, policing or other matters. It is important to involve local people, but your Lordships must bear in mind the constraint these days on the capacity of planning departments to cope with their ordinary business. It is well known that the number of planning officers is being reduced substantially as a function of the cutbacks that are being suffered. That does not make it any easier, to put it no higher, to support the valuable process of neighbourhood planning. In this context, I recall the words of one of our most famous poets, John Donne:
“No man is an island, entire of itself”.
In my judgment, no neighbourhood is an island entire unto itself unless it happens to be physically remote from others.
The experience of planning generally is that often planning applications evoke a negative response rather than a positive engagement. I recall particularly some occasions of that close to my heart. One was over 20 years ago when the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I were opposing one another. I was leader of the council and he was the leader of the opposition. He will recall that there was a proposal for building on greenfield rather than green-belt land towards the north of the city. This was part of a major plan that we were bringing forward as a council. It was opposed by the noble Lord and some of his more vociferous colleagues, as he will recall, on the grounds that it was unnecessary and so on. In fairness to them, they were reflecting the views of at any rate some of the people living in private housing estates which themselves had been built on green fields perhaps 20 to 30 years beforehand. These people would not contemplate the possibility of housing on the green fields that were in the vicinity of their estate.
More recently I encountered a similar and disturbing attitude while canvassing in a ward—not my ward—on the edge of the city. Again there were proposals about potentially building on greenfield sites. Here the houses from which we were somewhat vainly endeavouring to elicit support were part of a housing estate built within the last few years. I felt almost constrained to nominate myself for the Nobel Prize for self-restraint when one woman on whose door I knocked said that it was bad enough having any sort of housing built on the fields behind her, which of course a few years before would have encompassed her house, but at least there was not going to be social housing there. We have to take cognisance of the fact that there will be tensions and priorities to be assessed by local authorities which will perhaps transcend the immediate interests or concerns of local communities expressed through their neighbourhood planning or otherwise.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that he has in fact made a very good case for the neighbourhood planning process? It is a process that engages people in decision-making rather than huge numbers of houses being proposed from a centralised planning function in a civic centre and not commanding the support of local people because it has not been discussed with them. Does he further agree that the concept of permission in principle could well make things worse rather than better?
Lord Beecham
I think that we will shortly be spending a good deal of time on permission in principle and, judging by what the noble Lord has just said, there may be a degree of agreement. I repeat that people have to look beyond their immediate circumstances and geography. They have to acknowledge that there are needs beyond that immediate locality which have to be reflected in an overall plan. There needs to be a significant contribution from localities to the overall plan but not one that is limited purely by locality in the narrower sense; otherwise, particularly in the present circumstances, we will not get, for example, the required number of houses, although that is not the only issue that needs to be considered in terms of development.
However, there are housing shortages and physical constraints in some areas. One immediately thinks of London in that context, but other areas also have restrictions. My noble friend Lady Hollis may well say that Norwich, for example, is tightly constrained, and other urban authorities would say the same about their areas. One thinks of Stevenage, for example, which is built to its limits and has no option but to seek—unavailingly, as it turns out—collaboration on development from its neighbouring authorities. There is a balance to be struck, so up to a point I agree with the noble Lord. However, I notice that the noble Lord’s former colleagues are effectively trying to resurrect Gosforth Urban District Council, promoting the concept of the parish council there, which, of course, is entirely unrelated to the fact that they may feel a little under pressure politically.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, the noble Lord is very keen to talk about a place other than your Lordships’ House. It would be part and parcel of successful neighbourhood planning. It is very difficult to organise neighbourhood planning without a formal structure to enable it to happen. Therefore, I entirely subscribe to promoting town councils in the north of Newcastle upon Tyne and I sincerely hope that he will too.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this, but I want to support strongly the point made by my noble friend Lord Beecham and, to some extent, by the noble Lord, Lord True.
My home city is Norwich, which has tight boundaries. It is not parished. It has wards—obviously—and a strong network of community groups, such as housing associations, residents associations and so on. Part of that is because all the people of Norwich own the city centre as well as the community in which they live. That is fine, but in over 25 years in local government I had, I think, three ombudsman’s rulings against me and possibly one or two JRs. I won the JRs. All of them involved planning. All the cases—certainly those involving the ombudsman, which was why I was aggrieved—were seen as an issue of the individual in their own home being against the nasty local authority stopping them doing something.
Actually, it was the local authority wearing a planning hat trying to hold the ring permanently between the local particularised interest and the wider city interest. Sometimes it might be elderly folk against having a children’s play area near them which would produce noise and possibly ball games. It might be that residents wanted a road closure, nice culs-de-sac or chicanes in the road to keep traffic out or slow it down, against the need to have through roads, otherwise the roads down which the traffic went became intolerable for other residents—it just pushed the problem along.
I remember being involved in building a site for Travellers and the outrage associated with that. I put it down near an allotments area because it was in an outer area of the city, but all the allotments were raided and that produced quite a lot of problems for me. The biggest problem was trying to get social housing, particularly sheltered housing for the elderly, in owner-occupied areas where owner-occupiers believed that they had bought not only an owner-occupied house but an owner-occupied street, park, church and school.
On another occasion I was trying to put halfway houses across the city. I reckoned that no street could take more than about two halfway houses. Some of the houses were for people who were overcrowded or were desperate or suffering from domestic violence; some were for people coming out of Nacro homes and care homes. There was one home for anorexic young women and the residents fought it tooth and nail and would go to the ombudsman if they could. I was having to say that there was a wider community interest involved. I would meet them, talk to them and try to persuade them. On other occasions we were having to demolish something—whether for city widening or because the housing was unfit—and the residents, owners, perfectly reasonably did not want this to happen in their area.
While I hope that I have never gone ahead bulldozing my way through, in a mental sense, none the less you cannot always expect people to have the wider community interest at heart when their own personal interest will be affected by a decision. I probably would not. I am not trying to be superior about it. That is how it is. We had three ombudsman decisions. I think that we won two and lost one and in all cases the ombudsman was wrong in that they saw it as a bipartite city council versus the individual issue, rather than the city council trying to be the umpire in planning disputes.
I just hope that we do not believe in neighbourhood planning without this understanding that the whole city owns the city centre, the city’s traffic network and the city’s housing development and that the whole city owns the community pressures for halfway houses for disadvantaged and vulnerable people and that you must try to scatter them fairly across the community and so on. If we accept that there is always going to be tension, the one thing that I would not want, at any stage, is to devolve decision-making to a body that, by virtue of being a parish with formal electoral position, had extra leverage in this over and beyond that of appropriate, proper and decent discussion, debate, communication and consultation. I have seen in rural Norfolk the implications of nimbyism. I fought that off in my city and I do not want to see nimbyism come in through the back door due to any proposals like this.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, a number of amendments have been proposed to give additional rights and powers to neighbourhood planning groups and communities, and requiring the promotion of neighbourhood planning. I support the intention of the two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Shipley, aimed at increasing the promotion of and support for neighbourhood planning, particularly in urban areas. In relation to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about how many of the 1,800 communities are not parishes, we do not have exact figures but estimate that around 90% are and, therefore, that about 10% are unparished. That 10% is rising, but obviously it reinforces the points that have been made.
A legal duty to promote neighbourhood planning, either on local authorities or the Secretary of State, is unnecessary and can be achieved by other means—we need to maintain a balance. We recently launched a £1.5 million mobilisation programme to promote neighbourhood planning nationally. This includes capacity-building projects to train community organisations and community organisers in urban and deprived areas. These organisations and individuals will lead and promote neighbourhood planning in areas of lower take-up. This summer we will launch our first-ever national advertising campaign to raise awareness of neighbourhood planning and its benefits through local newspapers, posters and social media. These activities are in addition to our £22 million My Community support programme for neighbourhood planning.
This three-year programme confirms that the Government are financially committed to supporting neighbourhood planning and also recognises that urban or unparished communities face additional challenges in producing a plan and provides additional support to them. Forums in unparished areas can apply for up to £15,000 in grant, compared to the £9,000 available to parishes, as well as specialist technical support from planning consultants. It is up to the community how they use the grant to progress their neighbourhood plan, and we have seen lots of innovative community engagement as a result. Online resources, examples and case studies are also available on the support programme website that highlight the benefits of community planning to help inspire further communities and equip them with the necessary information and skills.
It is important, however, that we do not compel local authorities to duplicate existing work or bind them into promoting neighbourhood planning in perpetuity where members of a community may have decided that it is not for them. Furthermore, local authorities already have a legal duty to give such advice or assistance as they consider appropriate to facilitate neighbourhood planning. Our planning guidance underlines:
“A local planning authority should … be proactive in providing information to communities about neighbourhood planning”.
Therefore, Amendment 87 would duplicate this existing legal requirement.
It should also be recognised that a number of other organisations also promote neighbourhood planning and are well placed to provide advice and information to communities, such as the Royal Town Planning Institute and Planning Aid, the Prince’s Foundation, the CPRE, the NALC and ACRE. Plus, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, we have established a network of over 120 neighbourhood planning champions who voluntarily promote and support neighbourhood planning across the country. These are enthusiastic and experienced individuals, and we are supporting them with resources and training in order for them to share their expertise widely. A statutory duty, either on local authorities or on the Secretary of State, to promote, inform and finance neighbourhood planning is therefore unnecessary as it is already our policy and practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about the 23 pilots. They are currently under way and are due to completer this summer. They include Horsham Council, which is exploring opportunities for the devolution of planning functions to town and parish councils; Cotswold Council, which is piloting an approach to involving communities in setting infrastructure requirements; and Milton Keynes Council, which is pioneering an approach to involving communities in strategic housing land assessments. We will be sharing the learning from these pilots when they complete later in the year. I hope that with these reassurances the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising the issue of making it easier for neighbourhood forums to become parish councils through Amendment 88. We are keen to enable more forums to become parish councils where they wish, so that local people can play an even stronger role in serving the community. However, we do not feel that the amendment is necessary. As he will know, last March the then Government introduced new measures that made it easier for communities to set up new town and parish councils. We believe that it is important for these measures to bed in before any further review is considered.
These changes followed two public consultations.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
The Minister explained that resources were needed for these welcome developments. She gave examples of consultants and communities—which is fine—but where is the support for local authority planning departments? This is a very big additional load for them. Will there be more resources? The resources for planning departments are going down. One sees this all across the UK. These planning issues are not getting adequate support. The expertise in the departments is going down and this will make it more difficult for departments in future.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I think I have an answer, but I just need to check it, so if I could carry on I will try to come back to the noble Lord before I finish on this group.
These changes followed two public consultations which found that the legislation required in setting up a parish or town council was too burdensome and bureaucratic —and that it discouraged local campaigners from establishing one. The subsequent amendments made a number of important changes. The threshold of signatures required to trigger a review of governance was lowered from 10% to 7.5% of residents. The amount of time the local authority can take to complete a governance review was shortened to 12 months from receipt of a valid petition. This is speeding up the process and creating greater certainty for local campaigners. Importantly, the changes allow neighbourhood forums, which have a neighbourhood plan passed at referendum to trigger a community governance review for a new parish council without requiring them to submit a petition. The next phase of work will be to publish guidance on community governance reviews to establish the working principles and to reflect the evolving devolution landscape.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was correct in his figures. Early evidence indeed shows that the first neighbourhood plans are proposing around 10% more houses than the local plans. Applications are coming forward more quickly. Also, neighbourhood plans are helping to improve the acceptability of housebuilding among the public, which has also doubled.
In relation to the noble Lord’s question, the Government have provided £12 million to local authorities to support neighbourhood planning. I hope that with these reassurances noble Lords will withdraw or not move their amendments.
Lord Foster of Bath
To avoid anyone who may be listening to our debate being put off neighbourhood planning by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, could the Minister just confirm that a neighbourhood plan must conform to the thrust of a local authority’s strategic plan, such as its core strategy? Therefore, some of the concerns the noble Baroness has raised are not a reality. Indeed, if the noble Baroness would go to Exeter and see the excellent work between the community of St James and Exeter Council—a similar-sized authority—she would see that such problems simply did not exist because the two work together.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank the noble Lord. Yes, I can confirm that what he said is absolutely right.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Just to be clear, my Lords, I have no problems at all where a city has a tradition or a history of having parish councils and wants to use those as the vehicles for neighbourhood planning. All I am saying is that where this is not part of that authentic, organic texture of a city, but where there is a network of other forms of civic groups, community groups and so on—particularly where you have cities with very tight boundaries and very constrained lines—there can be tensions. If Exeter has overcome those, that is great. All I can say from my experience of 25 years of local government is that some of the most difficult decisions concerned precisely those tensions. Obviously one would work with them, and I agree that the neighbourhood planning councils would have to have planning proposals that conformed to the city-wide ones. I accept that, but one should not underestimate the locality—ward councillors and so on, as many of us have been—when it comes to how those tensions can occur. All I am saying is: by all means encourage local authorities to go down this road where there is already a history of parishes of this sort, but do not assume that this is the answer to the deeper problems of keeping a city alive, vibrant and able to respond confidently to new challenges. That is why I have some reservations about trying to suggest that it should apply across the board and that we should be actively encouraging it where people do not want it.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
I am a councillor in Lewisham and Crofton Park. At the moment we are in the process of setting up our own neighbourhood plan, which is very good and I welcome it. Equally, though, it has not answered all the problems. We have some challenges in our area, such as ensuring that there is proper retail provision. We have sites of multiple occupation with no building taking place, and so on. So the plan is all very good and I am supportive of it, but my noble friend has raised some genuine points.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am trying to think what on earth has ever existed or exists now that is the answer to all the problems. There are people in the world who think they have an answer to all the problems but they are usually—I am trying to think of a word I can use in your Lordships’ House—on the extremist fringe of ideas.
I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, which has been extremely interesting. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath for all the work he did in getting some oomph behind neighbourhood planning when he was a Minister in the DCLG. I also thank my noble friend Lord Stunell, who is in his place but has not spoken today, who was closely involved in the promotion of the Localism Act in the first place. I am not saying that it was all their work and no one else’s, but from these Benches it is quite stimulating and daunting in different ways to have them sitting behind me, ready to shoot me down when I say things that are not quite right.
I was fascinated by what became at one stage a mini-debate about the future of local governance in the former urban district of Gosforth in the north of what is now the city of Newcastle. I have to say that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, reminded me of debates in my own authority in Pendle perhaps 30 years ago, when we were looking hard at what had been five former urban districts and at whether they should have parish councils. They now have town councils. The arguments that the noble Lord is putting forward are very similar to those put forward by members of this party in Pendle 30 years ago. We set up the town councils in the former urban districts, with the support and assistance of referendums and local people, and they have been an astonishing success. I have to say that they are now one of the reasons why we are able to preserve some of our local services, which the borough council can no longer afford to run. So I say, “Good on you, Gosforth—get on with it”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that there would always be tensions. Local decision-making, however democratic or political it is and whoever is making the decisions, is always full of all kinds of local tensions. That is what it is all about. No one believes that neighbourhood planning is some miracle cure and that it is a perfect system that will take away all the differences of opinion among residents and other people in different parts of an area. Clearly it is not, but it is a means of involving a lot more people in the debates, the arguments and the issues. We will not necessarily get any more agreement at the end, although this process does tend to achieve more agreement than exists if it is not carried out.
I have recently been involved in huge planning applications—at least, huge by our standards; one of them involves 500 houses—over which there have been enormous disputes. A system of neighbourhood planning in that part of the borough, which is now being set up as a consequence of the decisions that have been made, would have helped to achieve sensible, even if still quite angry, engagement between people, instead of people just standing a long way apart and shouting at each other.
The system is not perfect—but nothing is perfect, and it is better than what happens if it is not there. On these Benches we are absolutely certain that that is the case. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is right to say that the people who most strongly oppose a new housing development are always those who are in the previous housing development. But that is just life, and part of life’s tensions. We have to bring people in and get them to talk about it. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments and the helpful information that she has provided, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Parminter
“Neighbourhood right of appeal
(1) After section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (“the 1990 Act”) insert—“78ZA Neighbourhood right of appeal(1) Where—(a) a planning authority grants an application for planning permission,(b) the application does not accord with policies in an emerging or made neighbourhood plan in which the land to which the application relates is situated, and(c) the neighbourhood plan in paragraph (b) contains proposals for the provision of housing development,certain persons as specified in subsection (2) may by notice appeal to the Secretary of State.(2) Persons who may by notice appeal to the Secretary of State against the approval of planning permission in the circumstances specified in subsection (1) are any parish council or neighbourhood forum, as defined in section 61F of the 1990 Act (authorisation to act in relation to neighbourhood areas), whose made or emerging neighbourhood plan includes all or part of the area of land to which the application relates, by two-thirds majority voting.(3) In this section an “emerging” neighbourhood plan means a neighbourhood plan that—(a) has been examined,(b) is being examined, or(c) is due to be examined, having met the public consultation requirements necessary to proceed to this stage.”(2) Section 79 of the 1990 Act is amended as follows—(a) in subsection (2), omit “either” and after “planning authority” insert “or the applicant (where different from the appellant)”;(b) in subsection (6), after “the determination” insert “(except for appeals as defined in section 78ZA (as inserted by section (Neighbourhood right of appeal) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016) and where the appellant is as defined in subsection (2) of that section)”.”
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, like a number of other noble Lords, I welcome the initiatives by the coalition Government to devolve power to local communities, particularly the introduction of neighbourhood planning. Given that the Government accept the importance of local people having a direct say in the planning of their communities and their environment, how can it be right for local people to have no redress when a planning application is approved that drives a coach and horses through everything that has been agreed? The amendment would create a limited neighbourhood right of appeal for neighbourhood planning bodies. It would enable them to appeal against the granting of permission for new housing that conflicts with the policies of a made, or well-advanced, neighbourhood plan.
We have heard figures given this afternoon—my noble friend Lord Greaves made it clear—that there are about 1,800 neighbourhood plans in the early stages of development. The Minister will correct me in her summing up if I am wrong, but I think that only about 140 of those—140 out of a potential 9,000—have gone right through the referendum process and been created. The Government are rightly keen to increase that number. Is it not a powerful disincentive to neighbourhood groups thinking of putting together the neighbourhood planning processes if they do not have a right of appeal? Why should they make the effort of producing a neighbourhood plan if such plans can easily be ignored when councils decide on planning applications, and the only opportunity to challenge such decisions is through costly judicial reviews, which are limited in scope to largely procedural matters?
The right that I am arguing for would apply only to parish councils and neighbourhood forums whose neighbourhood plans had progressed at least to the point of formal submission to the local authority for examination. Last month, the House of Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment —which is chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who is not in her place at the moment, and on which I serve—came out strongly in favour of a limited right of appeal. We did so after hearing the evidence from a number of organisations and stakeholders, including particularly powerful evidence from former chief planning inspectors, who supported a community right of appeal in certain circumstances. That support is important.
This amendment will support the Government’s commitment to get more neighbourhood planning and, as has been mentioned and confirmed by the Minister herself, neighbourhood planning delivers more homes, which is the overall purpose of the Bill. If we get that, we will need a whole raft of approaches to get more communities involved in neighbourhood planning. It is very encouraging today to hear more about how the Government are taking special steps to encourage more neighbourhood plans to come forward.
If I may say so as an aside, as a former councillor of Horsham District Council I was delighted to hear the Minister mention that Horsham is a member of the pilot. We will need all those initiatives to get more councils involved. I firmly believe that a limited community right of appeal will be one more means to get more neighbourhood plans that will help us to get more people involved in the planning process, help deliver more consensus and deliver homes we all know we need. I beg to move.
Lord Best (CB)
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on Amendment 88A, which would give parish councils and neighbourhood forums rights of appeal if permission was given for a development that failed to accord with a neighbourhood plan that had been prepared but was not yet finalised. I note that this proposal was debated in the other place, where Nick Herbert MP commended neighbourhood planning. I echo his views and agree with noble Lords who have congratulated the Government and the coalition Government on the neighbourhood planning initiative, which has now reached this number of 1,800 neighbourhoods—I think that well over 200 have now been concluded, but we will probably hear about that from the Minister.
During the passage of the Localism Bill through this House, I supported the idea of neighbourhood plans, but I opposed the idea that after the plan had been approved by the parish council, the district council, the county council, and by an independent examiner, it would then need to be approved through a referendum. I was worried that all the people who had not participated in any of the public meetings, consultation sessions and the rest after years of hard work by the local volunteers, who had nobly got together to prepare their neighbourhood plan, would come out of the woodwork and vote against the plan on principle because they opposed anything happening in their area. I was wrong. The referenda have all so far been in favour of the local plans, and this has not been a negative barrier to getting the plans through.
Returning to the debate in the other place, I note that Mr Nick Herbert went on to say that,
“support is undermined when speculative developers try to get in applications ahead of the completion of neighbourhood plans or even after they have been completed. They bang in their applications, and either they are upheld by the local authority, which is fearful of losing an appeal, or the developer makes an appeal that is upheld by the planning inspector. The development is then allowed to go ahead, which leads people, including groups of volunteers, to ask, ‘Why have we spent literally years working on this neighbourhood plan for where developments should go—a power that was given to us, the community—only for it to be overturned by a developer?’”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/1/16; col. 222.]
Nick Herbert’s views were echoed by Sir Oliver Heald MP, who thought it was wrong that a neighbourhood plan,
“can then be trashed by an application by a speculative developer.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/1/16; col. 222.]
Andrew Bingham MP said this was happening in Chapel-en-le-Frith, a village in his constituency. These sentiments from Conservative MPs were echoed by those of Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods MP for the Opposition.
I have followed the progress of the production of an excellent neighbourhood plan for the Cerne Valley in Dorset, covering the village whose name, Godmanstone, is in my title—I declare an interest in this as an owner of land within the area covered by the plan. In the case of the Cerne Valley, local volunteers formed a neighbourhood forum in the summer of 2011. Consultative meetings were held with fierce debates, and after huge efforts the group—a vanguard for neighbourhood forums, brilliantly led by a local farmer, Fred Horsington, who is now a neighbourhood planning champion—obtained the approval of the relevant parish councils for their plan. In December 2013, it was submitted to the council. It was then subject to independent examination and the examiner’s report came out in August 2014. Then, in December 2014, a referendum was held. To the considerable credit of all the volunteer workers, the plan was approved by a huge majority. Finally, on 8 January 2015, three and a half years from the beginning, the plan was approved by the local authority.
During this lengthy period, all the hard work of those engaged in this exercise was at risk from a developer putting in an application which did not accord with the emerging plan. Had this happened, the parish council and the neighbourhood forum would have had no way of appealing, and the council would have had to be hesitant about using the submitted plan in determining the planning application. Until the referendum was done and dusted, it was a nerve-wracking time. This amendment would overcome the problem and ensure that, even where a neighbourhood plan had not reached its final stage, it would make its mark as it should. I support the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I tabled an amendment in this group which covers similar ground but is not about neighbourhood planning. I tabled it at the behest of a different set of interest groups from those that my noble friend Lady Parminter has worked with, but it seems sensible for it to be in this group because the principle is the same.
This is an interesting issue, which has been around for quite a while. One of the interesting political aspects is that political parties tend to be in favour of some form of community right of appeal against the granting of planning permission when they are in opposition, but when they are in government they find all sorts of reasons why it is not practical. I think this has happened with all three parties, although I think my noble friend is complaining that we continued to be in favour of it during the coalition but were stopped by our big-brother partner—at least I think that is what she is saying; she may have been closer to it than I was.
I have no doubt whatsoever that, for major applications which are against policy, there is a very good argument in favour of the right of appeal. It is also true that nobody has come up with workable legislation. I am not claiming that my amendment, which covers the principle generally rather than just neighbourhood planning, is the answer. But we have to accept that the right of appeal has to be restricted to a considerable degree: it cannot be for any old planning application that comes along, even if it is against policy. If, for example, an extension to next-door’s kitchen is against council policy but the council has passed it, then—rightly or wrongly—it is not a matter for appeal. That right has to be reserved for a major planning application defined in some way or another. I have suggested,
“a major planning application or an application for permission in principle”—
no doubt we will be calling it a “PIP” before we have finished with this part of the Bill.
The legislation will have to clearly define who can object and carry out an appeal—whether this be a body, person or group of people—and will have to strictly limit the right to appeals which are clearly against policy. I believe that workable legislation can be drawn up to cater for those cases, but it has to be tightly drawn and not something that is going to generate loads of appeals, because that would totally undermine the planning system and would certainly undermine the Government’s wish to build many more houses.
I am in favour of this with the restrictions I have outlined. I would ask the Government to look at it seriously and ask an expert to come up with a scheme which we can then decide whether to go ahead with or not; otherwise, we will simply continue as we are. If the Conservatives lose the next election and someone else takes over, at the election after that the Conservatives will be doing what they did on platforms with me in 2010—saying what a good idea this is and promising to bring it in if they get into government. I am not blaming them, because everyone does that and everyone changes their mind.
Lord True
My Lords, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is very wide, albeit that it is limited to major applications, however they are defined. Of course it goes to the heart of an important point of principle in planning legislation, which is where the right of appeal does and does not lie. We all know that that is a giant question and I do not think that it can particularly be addressed in this group of amendments. However, there is no doubt that we all have electors, groups and campaigners who ask the question: how is it that we are rendered powerless after a decision? But it would mean making such a radical change in planning law that I do not think that we can address it properly at this point. However, I take it fully that the noble Lord has raised a vital issue.
On the more limited Amendment 88A, I understand the kind of case being put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and indeed the good intentions behind the amendment. The trouble is that we are writing law here, and you could look at it the other way round if it was put into statute. Let us say that this became law and someone wished to frustrate a development by a city council like Norwich, with which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is associated. If Norwich wanted to do something and had granted a planning application, we would have this provision on the statute book which potentially provides an opportunity for it to be subjected to an appeal to the Secretary of State—I guess that that means the inspector. It could be a mechanism not for promoting a community interest but for campaigning against a difficult decision which a planning authority had taken. That would be my concern with the proposed new clause as drafted because local authorities have to take difficult decisions.
There is theoretically a defence in proposed new subsection (1)(c), which states that the neighbourhood plan should contain,
“proposals for the provision of housing development”—
that is, the objectors could not be complete nimbys, but they might have a proposal for two or perhaps 10 houses whereas the local authority plan had just given consent for the construction of 150 affordable houses. In the hands of the wrong sort of people—I am sure not those of the party opposite—it could be a mechanism through which campaigners could operate to challenge embedded and accepted local authority proposals. I see also that proposed new subsection (2) states that the objectors could cover only,
“part of the area of land to which the application relates”.
So there could be a situation where a site brief had been drawn up for an inner-city plot, perhaps with community participation, running across two wards. Let us say that it had been agreed to construct housing, a school and so on, but then up pops a group in part of the site area—these things take a long time to process—which then says, “Oh no, we object to that and we will go to the Secretary of State”. You will end up with the whole of the worked-out site brief being potentially frustrated. I am sure that that is not what is intended by noble Lords opposite.
There is a further defence, in that the emerging plan —however it emerges—has to have reached a certain point, such as public consultation, though that can be pushed along relatively quickly. In the wrong hands, this power, which is intended to be benign, could be used to frustrate, challenge and delay difficult decisions taken in the broader interest by the principal authority. Indeed, it is an interesting reversal—
Baroness Parminter
Does the noble Lord not accept that, were one of these neighbourhood groups to bring forward an appeal, they could face costs against them if it was thought to be vexatious or went against them? That would be a powerful disincentive for some of the groups which, as the noble Lord says, might use this process for reasons that none of us would support.
Lord True
As the noble Baroness knows, the question of costs is very much in the hands of the inspector at the end of the day. Sometimes they are awarded and sometimes not. In my experience, a very lenient view is often—quite rightly—taken where community bodies are involved. I am, therefore, nervous about this amendment, as drafted, because although well intentioned it could very easily be exploited to create agitation where none existed before, to frustrate needed community development.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, as I have told the House many times before, I am a local councillor in Lewisham. I represent the ward of Crofton Park.
As I have mentioned before, we are in the process of developing our own neighbourhood plan by setting up a neighbourhood forum and taking a much more proactive role in how our local community develops. We are doing this using the powers in the Localism Act 2011. I agree with the comments made previously and in this debate about how that has been a very useful exercise and has certainly engaged with the local community. I am very supportive of that. We are seeking to produce a local script. We will get our documents together for our local community and we hope to have a referendum to get it approved within the next 18 months.
The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, allows for an appeal by a parish council or a neighbourhood forum to the Secretary of State if the local authority’s decision goes against the policies in the approved local plan. Amendment 101BGA seeks to do something similar but wider. I am interested in the Government’s response, because there is a conflict between what the Government are doing in this Bill and what the Localism Act says. Can the Minister deal with that? We need a proper balance; in that regard, I agree with the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord True. We have to move on, not continue to go backwards and forwards. Something needs to happen here. I will leave my remarks there, but when the Minister responds I may ask one or two questions.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, Amendments 88A and 101BGA propose a community right to appeal in various circumstances. The existing right of appeal recognises that, in practice, the planning system acts as a control on how an individual may use their land. As a result, the Government believe it is right that an applicant has the option of an impartial appeal against the refusal of planning permission. This existing right of appeal compensates for the removal of the individual’s right to develop.
The planning system, however, already provides ample opportunity where the community wishes to express a view on a planning matter, and the Government place great importance on community involvement in the planning system at every stage of the process. Communities have statutory rights to become involved in the preparation of the local plan for their area, through which they can influence development. As we have heard, the local community can also come together to produce a neighbourhood plan, which sets out how the community wants to see its neighbourhood develop. On the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, about progress, out of the 1,800 communities that have started, 400 draft plans have been published for consultation and of these 300 have been submitted for examination and more than 120 have been “made”—that is, brought into force.
These plans form the basis for decisions on planning applications. We are also proposing more powers for neighbourhood forums in the Bill: first, by allowing them to request that they are notified of applications in their area and, secondly, through existing powers to make neighbourhood forums statutory consultees on the local plan for the area. In addition, communities are able to make representations on individual planning applications, including major planning applications. Our proposals for “permission in principle”, which are contained in the Bill, include community consultation before a decision is made, upholding our principle of community involvement. We believe that the views of the community are considered at every stage in the decision-making process.
The Government do not believe that a community right of appeal is necessary as there are already plenty of opportunities to have a say on local planning issues, as the amendments acknowledge. It would be wrong for development to be delayed and uncertainty created at the last minute with a community right of appeal. These amendments would serve only to repeat issues that were raised and addressed during the planning application process. The law is very clear that decisions on planning applications must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. A made neighbourhood plan is therefore a powerful tool that must be the starting point for authorities’ decisions on applications.
To ensure that the significance of neighbourhood plans is absolutely clear, we issued further guidance on decision-making last month. This highlights national policy that states,
“where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan that has been brought into force, planning permission should not normally be granted”.
We also have clear national policy on the weight that can be given to emerging neighbourhood plans. This weight can be significant. The National Planning Policy Framework explains that the weight will vary depending on the stage of preparation that the plan has reached, any unresolved objections to it, and consistency within the framework.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the issue of developers being able to intervene in the neighbourhood planning process by putting in applications throughout. We do not believe that it would be right to stop development programmes coming forward at any time, as this would impact on local businesses, which need to invest, and local people, who need homes. However, throughout the rest of the Bill we are seeking to speed up and simplify the neighbourhood planning process so that the plans will have full weight as quickly as possible.
It is somewhat inevitable in a planning system that aims to balance competing demands for growth and environmental protection that development proposals may lead to limited conflict with one objective in a plan in order to deliver another. In these cases, we must allow decision-takers to balance these competing considerations, without the risk that every decision to approve an application could be taken to appeal. If, in rare cases, a community believes that the local planning authority is minded to approve an application that clearly conflicts with a local plan or an emerging or made neighbourhood plan, it can ask the Secretary of State to intervene and call in the application for his or her own determination.
We also announced in January that, for a further six months, the Secretary of State’s criteria on recovering and deciding planning appeals would continue to include housing proposals in those areas where there is a made or submitted neighbourhood plan. This reflects the Government’s clear policy intention for neighbourhood planning.
Baroness Parminter
I thank the Minister for that point but, with regard to recovering planning appeals, can she confirm that that would not apply where permission has been granted by the local authority contrary to a neighbourhood plan? It could be recovered if the local authority has refused the planning permission and subsequently been taken to appeal, but it could not be taken forward if the local authority has granted permission to something contrary to the neighbourhood plan.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I believe that that is correct, yes.
We already have a system which ensures that the views of communities are heard, understood and taken into account in reaching a decision. The best way for communities to engage in the planning system is for them to become involved in the development of local and neighbourhood plans, and make representations on applications as they arise. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.
Baroness Parminter
I thank the Minister for her reply and I thank all the people who have spoken in this debate. I am disappointed, since I hoped that the Government would think that my amendment was trying to deliver on their objectives of not only delivering more homes but encouraging more people to get involved in neighbourhood planning, which we all agree is an important and welcome new part of the planning process. Of course, planning is about balancing competing demands. I still feel that the balance is not correct but in the light of where we are today and the speed at which we need to go forward, I will withdraw the amendment at this point.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Power to direct
The Secretary of State shall by regulations define powers for local planning authorities to direct the use of underused, un-used or otherwise available publicly owned land in a local area to support redevelopment or regeneration as outlined in a local development plan.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I will be relatively brief. Amendment 89 seeks to empower the Secretary of State by regulation to enable a local planning authority to direct the use of underused public land to support development and regeneration. The amendment seeks to make speedier use of public land that is not in use or underused. We have all talked about the housing crisis in many debates in this House, particularly during the course of the Bill. We all know we need to build more houses. Although we may disagree on what sorts of houses we need to build and how to build them, we all accept we need to build more.
The amendment requires local planning authorities to designate land for housing co-ops—something I am very supportive of, and I know that Members on the Government Benches have also expressed support for housing co-operatives in the past. I declare that I am a member of the Co-operative Party, which puts forward policies for a variety of solutions to the problems we face. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I need to make it clear that Amendment 89 is not Labour Party policy; it is my view and I believe it is supported by millions of people in the country. Despite my repeated interventions, this is the only amendment I have moved in my name and I therefore need to take a little more time in dealing with it. I think you will find that my previous interventions have been very brief.
Amendment 89 offers us the opportunity to debate the cost of land—the real cost before the profiteers move in. It concerns the impact of land cost on the property market, speculation in land by the land banks and property speculators and hoarders, house price inflation and capital gains tax on developing land. It is about the compulsory purchase of agricultural land for housing development.
I recognise that exception is already made in law for exceptional rural housing development. However, while on occasion that land is offered free or at marginal cost by landowners, it is often offered in return for planning permission on land which is sold at market prices. I argue for the need to go much further, and have done so in interventions on a number of occasions during the course of the Bill.
When we want to build an airport, roadway, motorway, bypass, bridge, railway line, reservoir or development in the public interest, under present arrangements we use powers under various pieces of legislation, in particular the land compensation Acts. Compulsory purchase orders are issued, signed off by the Secretary of State, and the land is acquired at its then market rate, plus an uplift. The uplift can include an occupant’s loss payment, a basic loss, an allowance for the replacement of land to include fees and taxes paid, disturbance costs and an allowance to cover the cost of land unreasonably affected by adjacent development. These additional costs are usually but not always marginal compared to the costs of the original CPO land in question.
The process applies where agricultural, pastoral or arable land is the subject of compulsory purchase. By my reading, the justification for the CPO is set out in Section 226 of the Land Compensation Act 1965, as amended by Section 99 of the 2004 Act where it states that a local authority must not seek a CPO unless it feels that the development of the land will,
“promote improvement of the economic well-being of the area … and promote the improvement of the social well-being of the area”.
Denning, in his judgment in Prest v Secretary of State for Wales, opined on the justification for compulsory purchase, saying that,
“Parliament only grants it, or should only grant it, when it is necessary in the public interest”.
He then went on to set out the safeguards.
Lord True
My Lords, I, too, have an amendment in this group, which I suggested should be moved up in the interests of making progress, because it touches on similar territory to the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I will not follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in his very interesting remarks. Of course land is a huge conundrum. Heaven knows, as leader of an authority with some of the highest embedded land values in the country, one knows that that is an immensely complicating factor. But, again, a bit like the challenge laid down by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about rights of appeal across the planning system, it is perhaps a little big for this Committee at this stage and at this time—although it would certainly merit a debate in your Lordships’ House.
On the question of co-ops: 148709 was my old mum’s co-op number. She was also a member of the party—I found her card after she died. She hid it very well in her later years as a Conservative voter but she always loved the idea of the co-op. Housing co-operatives are very welcome. I was brought up to believe to some degree in the co-operative principle.
I want to go back to the origin of where I am coming from, and the other amendment is coming from, which is the poor old local authority. We take so much incoming fire—I hear it time and again, and I have sat through and followed a bit of the Bill. We see these other people, these public undertakings, sitting on land and—I will not use the demotic but noble Lords know what I am thinking. Yet the local authorities get the blame for not developing it. Time and again I hear it: they are the cause and the obstacle and they are the people who do not do it. Some of us are getting beyond the extremes of tolerance for this strand of argument.
I put down an amendment to Clause 137, which is this longfalutin thing about local authorities having to compile registers of land, which would take a few officers a lot of time to do. If that is what the Government want us to do, I suppose that we will have to do it and I suppose we probably will not get any money for it—but can we not do something with these registers? So I suggested that maybe if local authorities have these registers, we could use them and start to challenge some of the registered people in our area who are not doing anything to do something about the land.
Frustrated local authorities in my borough are watching Network Rail, which has a planning application granted in 2011 that is still not fully executed and in fact scarcely begun. It is a disgrace. Well over 100 houses there should be developed. Meanwhile, the private sector is getting on with it across the road. I could name many others.
I do not want to anticipate remarks on what will come up later in the Bill. I see that in Clause 183 there is all this worthy stuff about how public authorities are going to be encouraged to engage with local authorities on proposals to dispose of land. That would be a nice thing, would it not? Why do they not just do it now? They do not need an Act of Parliament to get on with it.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, it is appropriate to speak after the noble Lord, Lord True, because earlier on in our previous Committee discussions I referred to the point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred earlier, namely the deliberations of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment. I say again what I said previously: one of the great things that really stuck out for me is the deficit in housebuilding and the concurrent fall-off in local government building on its own account.
There are all sorts of reasons for that, but I would definitely side with the noble Lord, Lord True, on the point that he made about there being a clear case for local authorities to take a hand in the development process. I really do not think that the Government’s objectives will be met unless that can be harnessed in some shape or form.
I give the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, great credit for his consistency and persistence. Earlier in Committee he made clear his view on the problem of excessive house prices linked to excessive land price. He is probably aware that I have a somewhat different take on this, and I hope that he will forgive me for that, but I realise that there is an issue here.
In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made reference to agricultural land, but the amendment itself does not seem to necessarily make it clear that it is referring to acquisitions of agricultural land as opposed to acquisitions of land generally at an agricultural value. My next point follows from that because the land may well have been used previously for some other purpose that may have no relationship to its agricultural heritage of 100 or so years previously in either physical or valuation terms. I just flag that up. So it depends on the origins of the land, and it also depends on whether it is serviced or unserviced, because of course there can be an awful lot of infrastructure, particularly if it is land that was previously developed, which adds a lot to its value.
The noble Lord’s proposal is, on the face of it, expropriatory, although he outlined a provision for a way in which there could be a clawback from that. But as it stands, it would require the effective rewriting of current compulsory purchase and land compensation legislation. I fear that it will be seen as departing from a principle of fair compensation, particularly where land is acquired for a purpose for which there is an obvious general market value—unlike, say, a piece of infrastructure such as a road or a school or something which is only ever going to be produced for a public purpose, and, in the case of a road, probably only by a public authority or in pursuit of a public authority’s powers.
But I remind your Lordships that this has been tried before. During my university years, we still had the Land Commission Act, which had something called the betterment levy attached to it. It was scrapped either the year before or during the year in which I took my finals. It was replaced in due course by something called development land tax. This was levied at about 80% of the uplift and it simply caused the land supply to dry up. So little land came forward that one of the first things that the Thatcher Government did when they came in was to scrap it to try to free the thing up. So if you are not careful, you can completely reverse the process where land is voluntarily brought forward and you will have to predict and provide as a public authority and acquire the land, presumably by compulsory means at a low value.
At the moment, the development gains generate some pretty large funds for landowners. However, earlier I sent the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, an email based on the experience of one of my colleagues, who found that the profit made by a developer was substantially—by a matter of 50%—over and above what the landowner got for the land. We should bear in mind that what he got for the land presumably included its current-use value—for example, as agricultural land—plus any increment that he was paid for the development. But the process funds an awful lot of things under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act, the community infrastructure levy and other community and societal benefits. We already have a tax regime that taxes its share of those things, through capital gains tax, corporation tax or whatever.
Unless the noble Lord’s proposal resulted in a wholesale fall in property values—which, as I said earlier, would be a brave new world of an entirely different scale and nature and might have some very undesirable consequences—it would not reduce values. New homes are typically less in any given year—probably substantially less—than 1% of the existing total housing stock. It is a bit of a scratch on the surface, I fear.
That said, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord. There is no question that housing is very expensive. But it would pay to look at a number of other things. The noble Lord, Lord True, mentioned one of them: vacant land that is suitable and is not being used. I remember—and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, will know what I am talking about—a site in the middle of Horsham which the landowner refused to sell or allow to be brought forward for development. It became a sort of island of industrial activity in the middle of the town. I can well relate to local authority concern about that sort of situation.
I also point to some of the restrictive practices operated by a number of the major housebuilders and the way they achieve their profit margins. I certainly think that would warrant looking at. Then there are the costs, risks, drawn-out timeframes—if you like, the costs of democratic input into the planning situation, but I do not complain about that—and the uncertainty of bringing land forward for development and getting consent, as well as the necessary sustainability studies that have to go in beforehand. They have to go in before the local authority will even consider that the thing is relevant. That might be for known, important ecological reasons but might also be without there being any shred of evidence that there is any ecological value of any sort. That hugely adds to the up-front costs.
I now point to the manner in which some utility companies exercise their powers to try and get an additional share of the action—if I can term it thus—notwithstanding their obligation to connect and supply. I am afraid that it arises because, to a large extent, they are monopoly suppliers. They really do not have to do anything other than say, “Well, if you want a connection it is going to involve such and such and by the way we need a 50% increase in the size of the sewage treatment works” or whatever. I have come across situations where the local sewerage utility company said it would not put anything in its advance plan until it was included in the local plan produced by the local planning authority and the local planning authority saying that it would not put it in unless it knew it was in the forward plan for the utility company—so complete gridlock. This game is being played up and down the country. For all the development sites that actually come to fruition, there are others where there have been significant expenses but it has all been left on the cutting-room floor and does not happen.
Then I point to the inability of small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly builders and developers, to get finance, other than on the security of the land itself —and even that can be extremely difficult. I know of situations like that professionally and through other sources.
The tax advantages of home ownership make it a most desirable form of financial security. There are good reasons for this, but it does not help exit prices if it has that sort of advantage. This Bill is all about fundamentally making more land available for development in total, which means everybody realising that their year-on-year incremental increase in home value comes at a cost to society—at the same time, of course, as benefiting the economy. We need to be quite ruthless in our analysis of that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, this group of amendments deals with matters relating to land. I have been left in no doubt of the strength of feeling on this subject, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and others. I will take a little time later on addressing the points that he has raised in speaking to Amendment 89L.
Amendments 89 and 89M, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would, first, by regulations give local planning authorities the power to direct the use of underused, unused or otherwise available publicly owned land in their area, where they support redevelopment or regeneration opportunities outlined in a local development plan. Secondly, they would require local planning authorities to designate land for use by housing co-operatives.
Amendment 98C, in the name of my noble friend Lord True allows local planning authorities to challenge the owner of the land to present planning proposals to the local planning authority within six months in conformity with the local plan, where, first, it has compiled a register, which he mentioned, under Clause 137; secondly, the owner of the land is a government department, Mayor of London or other public authority, transport undertaker or other statutory undertaker; thirdly, the land is unused or underused previously developed land; and, finally, the body concerned has not prepared or declines to prepare a plan for its development. Again I listened carefully to the points raised by my noble friend.
Where the owner declines to present such a plan it must publish within the six-month period a response showing good reason why the land should not be developed. If the local planning authority considers that the response fails to show good reason, it may present its own proposals for development, compulsorily purchase the land and exercise any planning consent that is then granted.
Amendments 89 and 98C share some common features, in that they seek to give local authorities new powers to control the development of land held by other public bodies. A power for the Secretary of State to direct public bodies to take steps to dispose of their interests in land was created by the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. The 1980 Act provides an important constraint in the use of the power: where the Secretary of State proposes to exercise the power, if the body makes representations to the Secretary of State regarding the proposed direction then the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the land can be disposed of without serious detriment to the performance of the body’s functions before ordering disposal.
Because of the geographical limitations of their interests, local planning authorities will not usually be in a position to make judgments about the potential impact of a direction to dispose on other public bodies with wider, and in many cases national, interests. Government departments, for example, often have functions critical to the national interest, such as the provision of transport infrastructure, healthcare and defence. It would not be right for local planning authorities to make judgments about how the local interests of other public bodies interacted with their wider functions.
The Government have already committed to dispose of any land that is surplus to requirements, and have announced an ambitious target to release sufficient land for 160,000 homes over the course of this Parliament. Moreover, to ensure that people are able to challenge the Government in the use of their land, the Government have introduced the right to contest. This gives anyone the ability to challenge the Government to sell land or property where they believe it is not needed and could be put to better economic use.
However, I support the principle that local planning authorities should have a greater role when government departments are planning to release land. That is why Clause 183 creates a new duty on Ministers of the Crown to engage with local authorities when planning to dispose of land. This will enable local authorities to raise their views with the landowning body as it is developing its disposal strategy.
I turn to Amendment 89M. The Government want to see new homes and places that communities can be proud of and that stand the test of time, and we recognise the important contribution that community-led housing schemes, including those by housing co-operatives and community land trusts, make to this important agenda. While I recognise the good intention behind the amendment, it is not necessary to place a new requirement on local planning authorities to allocate land specifically for housing co-operatives. National planning policy requires local planning authorities to plan proactively to meet all housing needs in the area, based on the needs of different groups in the community.
The noble Lord will also wish to be aware that neighbourhood planning already gives communities several routes to allocate land in their area to meet local housing needs. Communities can use a neighbourhood plan to allocate land for housing development, including land put forward by a housing co-operative. Our early evidence indicates that neighbourhood plans are allocating 10% more homes than the local plan. Furthermore, community right-to-build orders allow communities to give planning permission for a particular development without the need for a traditional planning application. Neighbourhood plans and community right-to-build orders are subject to a local referendum, so proposals benefit from having genuine local support.
Last year we launched a £22.5 million support programme for neighbourhood planning and a £3.5 million programme for community buildings. These fund communities with up to £15,000 to prepare a neighbourhood plan or neighbourhood development order, and up to £50,000 to prepare a community right-to-build order or a community-led planning application for housing. Over 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, and there have been over 1,000 applications to the programmes this year.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I see the point that the Minister makes about public bodies and land, but I can also think of lots of scruffy plots of land all over the place that are clearly not of any strategic importance to the public body they belong to—for example, Network Rail—but are just sitting there looking pretty tatty. I can think of loads of them very close to here, and we could easily build a few houses on them. They are the type of land that we are talking about, and they should be dealt with.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The noble Lord makes a good point but I draw his attention again to the national planning policy, in which there is a requirement for local planning authorities to look at these areas and plan proactively. There is of course now the brownfield register as well. With that, I hope there is some reassurance that progress can be made.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Not really, no. If the land is owned by Network Rail and Network Rail has no intention of doing anything with it, that is part of the problem.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
It is fair to say that we continue to work hard to press Network Rail to pick up that specific point. I believe that we have made more progress than ever before in addressing those issues. It is important that we look at all areas of land that are not being used, and that is exactly what this planning process aims to do.
I shall now, if I may, make some progress and turn to Amendment 89L and compulsory acquisition. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has argued—and I accept his passion on this subject—that the imperative for house building is so great that land acquired for that purpose should be acquired as cheaply as possible. There is no doubt that more houses should be built, and that cheap land would help towards that end: he makes a very fair point.
The need for housing is not, however, the only imperative in play when land is acquired by compulsion. The acquiring authority is acting in the public interest, but in return the claimants, whose land and property is being taken from them, must be treated fairly. It may help the Committee if I briefly outline the principles of compensation for land taken by compulsion.
The compensation code is underpinned by the principle of equivalence. This means that the owner should be paid neither less nor more than his loss. The code provides that land shall be purchased at its open market value, disregarding the effect of the scheme underlying the compulsory purchase. The land is valued in a construct called the “no-scheme world”, whereby any increase or decrease in value which is due to the scheme is disregarded. Land will always have its existing use value, but market value also takes into account the effect of any planning permissions that have already been granted, and also the prospect of future planning permissions. This is generally known, as I am sure the noble Lord will know, as “hope value”. In the context of compensation for compulsory purchase, all this is assessed according to the planning assumptions in the Land Compensation Act 1961, which require the valuer to assume the scheme underlying the acquisition is cancelled. Your Lordships’ House may recall that these were reformed in the Localism Act 2011.
In some situations there will be no hope value, because the individual claimant could not have obtained planning permission for some more valuable use. For example, the land might be in an isolated rural location where permission for development would have been unlikely to be granted in the absence of a comprehensive scheme requiring compulsory purchase powers. In other situations, perhaps where land is acquired near an existing settlement, there will be pre-existing prospects for development on the land—in other words, development potential which existed prior to the scheme—and the strength of those prospects will be reflected in the market value of the land.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Why should hope value be transformed into reality on the basis of a planner’s pen? The planner decides, “I recommend to my local authority that that land should be used for housing”, and in an instant transforms the value of that land from £20,000 a hectare to maybe £5 million a hectare. Why? How can we possibly justify that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I think that I explained that earlier, by saying that we needed to look at both sides, and to use the principle of fairness. The fact of the matter is that unless we intervene and there is a status approach, the value of land is what it is. I believe that the existing regulations are fair. Land will always have its existing value, but the hope value needs to be taken account of as well.
As I said, in some situations there will be no hope value, because the individual claimant could not have obtained planning permission for some more valuable use. For instance, the land might be in an isolated rural location where permission for development would have been unlikely to be granted. Therefore, compensation under the code is paid at the open market value of the land in the “no-scheme world”. This provides a fair level of compensation. I hope that these explanations have reassured noble Lords. I have spent a bit of time expanding on the arguments raised, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate today. I know that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said that this was the first amendment he had tabled, but he has played a really crucial role in our discussion of the Bill, and we welcome that very much. All his points should be carefully considered. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, there should be a wider debate rather than just here tonight.
I can say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that I still have my RACS card somewhere—my first one, which I have kept for many years. Like him, I think that housing co-ops are wonderful things. In the ward I represent in Crofton Park, which I have mentioned before, we have the Ewart Road Housing Co-op, which is a fantastic place. It is clean, well run, well managed and there is a long waiting list of people trying to get in there. It is real credit to the people who live there, and what a great place Crofton Park in Lewisham is.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, about the plots of public land. We are going after strategic sites, but there are loads of scruffy plots of land that blight our communities and which need to be dealt with. I say to the Government that we could even build a few starter homes on them if we got our hands on them. They need to be dealt with, and it is not good enough if they do not do that.
Public bodies, clearly, like private sector companies, can sit there and speculate on the land, see its value going up and do nothing with it. That may not be what is going on but the issue needs to be dealt with. It is not good enough for that land just to sit there. The Government should be doing more. I heard the comments of the noble Lord, Lord True, and hope that the Government were listening. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Shipley
“(6B) The powers outlined in subsection (6A) will not apply where a local planning authority has already complied with subsection (2).”
Lord Shipley
My Lords, in moving Amendment 89ZA I will also speak to Amendments 89AZA, 89AZB and 89AZE. I will do so briefly.
Amendment 89ZA would ensure that where a local authority has complied with the relevant requirements in Section 20(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—that is, it has complied with the relevant requirements to submit its planning document for independent examination, and believes it is ready for it—the examination of its development plan can continue. This is important because the powers given to the Secretary of State under Clause 130 are excessive, given that the local authorities may well have done what it was required to do. This amendment would simply mean that the powers of the Secretary of State in Clause 130(6A) would not apply where the local planning authority had already complied with Section 20(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
Amendments 89AZA and 89AZB would do two things. The former would make it clear that where the Secretary of State chooses to intervene in local development documents or schemes under Section 15 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, any expenditure incurred would be met by the Secretary of State and not by the local authorities as currently indicated in the Bill.
Amendment 89AZB would ensure that development documents prepared by local planning authorities have effect in decision-making until an intervention under Section 21 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is actually made. In other words, it attempts to restrict some of the additional powers being granted to the Secretary of State to intervene when it is not necessary to do so.
There is a small drafting error in Amendment 89AZE. Three lines were missed out, so that the amendment simply states, “leave out lines 43 and 44”. In a sense, the meaning is the same. The amendment says that when the Secretary of State chooses to use default powers under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, any expenditure incurred should be met by the Secretary of State and not by local authorities.
I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about all four of these amendments, which address the concerning issue of centralising power over the planning process as opposed to devolving it. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendments. Before addressing them, I would like to make some introductory remarks about the importance of the policy and our proposed approach to ensuring that all communities benefit from the certainty that a local plan can provide. I hope that this will provide some helpful context for our discussions.
Communities deserve to know where new homes will be built. That is why we are committed to a plan-led system with local plans at its heart. Throughout the progress of this Bill, we have heard again and again from various organisations about the importance of local plans that set the vision for an area and provide the framework for how housing and other essential development needs will be met.
Since the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, local planning authorities have had more than a decade to produce a plan. The majority—70%—have done so. However, not every local authority has made the same progress towards getting its local plan in place. We have made clear our expectation that all local planning authorities should have a plan in place. We have also been clear that plans should be kept up to date to ensure the policies in them remain relevant. If this is not happening, it is right that we take action.
Before I go on to explain our specific proposals, I also want to assure the Committee that, contrary to what some may have come to understand, our proposals do not seek to centralise plan-making. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords of the current position and then set out the reforms that we are proposing.
Parliament has already given the Secretary of State the power to intervene in local plan-making. The existing legislation enables the Secretary of State to direct that a plan or any part of it be submitted to him for approval. He can also already intervene if he thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything that is necessary for it to progress a local plan. He can also recover his costs in this situation, and the action we are proposing is not new. But currently where he intervenes, the Secretary of State commonly finds that his only option is to take over responsibility for the entire progress, and we want to change that. In cases where authorities are not making progress on their local plan, I can assure noble Lords that wherever possible we want to work with those authorities to bring plans forward. The provisions we are discussing today support this approach. We would retain our ability to intervene where it is necessary to do so, but the Secretary of State could also target his intervention and return responsibility for plan-making to an authority for decisions to be made locally wherever possible.
I shall now turn briefly to the specific amendments that have been laid. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his comments on Amendment 89ZA. I was not in my place for part of them, but I did hear some of his speech. I shall respond on the understanding that the proposition is that, where a local planning authority considers that it has complied with Section 22 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—that it has complied with the requirements in the relevant regulations and it considers that its plan is ready for independent examination—the powers in Clause 130 allowing the Secretary of State to give directions to an examiner would not apply. This would be at odds with the very purpose of the clause, which is intended to ensure that authorities are given every opportunity to address any shortcomings identified at examination as an alternative to withdrawing a plan. The Noble Lord’s amendment would disapply the proposed powers in many cases.
The clause enables the Secretary of State to take a view and, where he considers it appropriate, to direct an inspector. He could, for example, direct that an examination be suspended, thus giving an authority the opportunity to undertake further work to address the shortcomings identified at examination. I should make it clear that the measures limit the directions that the Secretary of State could make only to matters of procedure.
I hope that my response has explained briefly to the noble Lord and the Committee why the Government cannot accept the thrust of his arguments on this matter, and I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, which I will read carefully in Hansard. I hope that he will have resolved these matters, but if not we may ask to have a further discussion on the issues involved. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Use class for affordable housing
(1) Part C of the Schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 is amended as follows.(2) In Class C3 (dwellinghouses), at end insert “,but not for a use within Class C3A.”(3) After Class C3 insert—“Class C3A. Affordable housingUse for the provision of affordable housing.””
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I rise to move this amendment tabled in the names of my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Tope. Much discussion has taken place on the need for affordable housing, but it is unclear what will actually happen. This amendment would create a new clause for housing which is affordable by granting to local authorities the power to protect defined sites for affordable housing.
For the past decade, local authorities have had to carry out strategic housing market assessments without which their housing and planning decisions would not be informed by evidence. Thus they know, or should know, the level and nature of demand in their areas for housing which is genuinely affordable. In addition, they are able to obtain evidence on desired tenures, size of homes and their location. They are, however, restrained in delivering the housing they know is needed from the evidence base they have obtained because the market lags behind changes in needs and demand. So a local authority can identify a need for a particular site to have homes which are affordable built on it, but currently it cannot specify that. This is not about creating mono-tenure estates since the parcels of land could be quite small.
A crucial consideration in this proposal is that it would help with the viability gap for affordable housing: if affordable housing was detached from the C3 use class, land prices would fall when a site was defined as being for affordable housing. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his Amendment 89A, which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. It seeks to introduce a new use class for affordable housing, and I acknowledge that it is important that affordable housing is maintained for present and future generations. I believe that our reforms will achieve this.
Use classes are an important deregulatory tool that group together uses with very similar land-use impacts. They remove the need for planning permission for change within the use class. While I understand the intent of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness in proposing this amendment, introducing a new use class for affordable housing would add unnecessary bureaucracy and cost to the planning process and added burdens on local planning authorities.
For example, when a property changes from affordable to private, a planning application would be required. Tenants who exercised their right to buy their property would be required to submit a planning application before being able to do so, slowing down the application process and adding burdens on local authorities and unfair restrictions on tenants. Where someone is staircasing to full ownership of a shared-ownership property, the same would apply.
We believe, therefore, that our approach to affordable housing will help those who aspire to home ownership to realise their ambitions, and strikes the right balance—it is a balance—between maintaining the affordable housing stock and providing opportunities for those who want to access or move up the property ladder. Our reforms will help to ensure that affordable housing continues to be provided in the future. Substantial further funding will go into the system from right-to-buy receipts and the sale of vacant high-value assets and will generate additional homes for every one sold, thereby increasing the overall supply of housing.
With this brief assurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I thank the Minister for his response and I agree that there is a balance to be struck between maintaining housing in the affordable sector and the right to buy. I will read Hansard and we may return to this matter at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 89AZC and shall speak to the rest of the amendments in this group.
This is about the Secretary of State’s default powers as part of the plan-making process. The Bill introduces a new Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. New subsection (1) explains that this section applies if the Secretary of State,
“thinks that a local authority are failing or omitting to do anything it is necessary for them to do in connection with the preparation, revision or adoption of a development plan document”.
The rest of it sets out what the Secretary of State can do, basically by taking over the process and doing it himself or herself. This amendment is about new subsection (5), which says that when this development plan document has been produced and published, either by the Secretary of State or the local planning authority, the Secretary of State has the choice of doing three things: first, to approve the document, or approve it with modifications; secondly, to,
“direct the authority to consider adopting the document by resolution of the authority as a local development document”,
which is the normal process that would take place if the authority was producing the document; or, thirdly, to reject it.
The purpose of the amendment is to put the decision as to what to do with the document—adopt it, adopt it with modifications as allowed or reject it—firmly in the hands of elected local councillors. The purpose of this clause is to say what happens when the authority, as a corporate body, is not doing what it should through its staff and so on. Surely the decision on whether to adopt ought to revert in the end to elected local councillors, even if the Secretary of State has taken the process of producing the document out of the authority’s hands because it has not been doing it right. It is as simple as that: a matter of local democracy.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, superficially sounds extremely attractive but I have done this job and I say to him that it really does not work like that. The truth is that the Secretary of State will use these powers only when they are utterly necessary. The last thing that he or she will want to do is to get into the mixture of arguments and local issues which this amendment is bound to cause. But there has been such a history of difference in the willingness, or indeed the ability, of local authorities to get on with the business that it is necessary to have this intervention power. After doing all the work and getting it sorted out the idea that you could then hand it back to the local authority, which you have intervened on only because of its incompetence, uselessness or sheer downright intention not to act, seems a bit loopy, to be honest. It would mean going back to the very same people and telling them that they had the opportunity to decide whether the Secretary of State had done the right thing. The answer is that you would use this power only in very extreme cases, and in those cases the last lot of people who you would want to come back to are in that sort of local authority.
Lord Greaves
Perhaps I can answer that before the Minister replies; I know that he may agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, seems not to understand that there is often a considerable difference between, on the one hand, the bureaucratic competence—I use that word in all its uses as there may be a lack of resources, a lack of professional ability or whatever—and, on the other, the ability of elected councillors to make a decision on the basis of a report and the evidence put in front of them. They are two quite separate things.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his comments. While I do not wish to repeat my earlier comments or those made by my noble friend Lady Evans on this important issue of planning, whether neighbourhood or local, to reassure the noble Lord I reiterate that we are committed to a plan-led system with local plans at its heart.
Throughout the progression of the Bill we have heard again and again, from various organisations, of the importance of local plans that set the vision for an area and provide the framework for how housing and other essential development needs will be met. However, not every local authority has made the same progress towards getting its local plan in place. We have made clear our expectation that all local planning authorities should have a local plan in place and that the policies in those plans should be kept up to date.
I shall focus on Amendments 89AZC and 89AZD, as tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which collectively seek to limit the Secretary of State’s power to take decisions on whether a local plan should be adopted where the Secretary of State intervenes under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. I hope that my response can, in a moment, provide reassurance to the noble Lord that the Government are committed to working with local planning authorities to get the plans in place. At the same time, I will explain why we cannot support amendments that would in effect remove from the Secretary of State powers that he currently holds or powers that we consider necessary should the Secretary of State not be satisfied with a plan produced by a local planning authority following his direction. The Secretary of State can currently intervene under Section 27 if he thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything necessary to progress a development plan document—that is, the documents which comprise the local plan.
Clause 132 substitutes a new Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. This is to enable more targeted intervention in plan-making by the Secretary of State. These measures lie at the heart of our ambition to work pragmatically with local authorities to get plans in place that help to deliver the homes and jobs we need.
The amendments we propose are intended to enable the Secretary of State to return appropriate decision-making on a development plan document to a local planning authority. The noble Lord’s amendments go further in such a way that they would remove the ability of the Secretary of State to approve a local plan or to reject the document. In other words, his only action would be to direct an authority to consider adopting the document. Although I am aware of the experience that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has in local matters and local planning, I also very much take account of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Deben and the experience he has had in senior office on these matters.
I reiterate that it remains a balance and we believe that the balance is right. We want to work with authorities to get plans in place. Our proposals give the Secretary of State new options for doing this, without being too prescriptive. However, I remind the noble Lord that the Government may arrange for another body to prepare a local plan only where the local planning authority has failed to do so, despite being given every opportunity. It is a last resort.
The measures we propose provide the necessary assurance to communities and others that where an authority has not put a plan in place or ensured that a plan remains effective, we are able to take the necessary action. Not to do so would risk delaying or even preventing the growth and jobs which are so urgently needed. This action must include taking decisions on whether that plan should or should not form part of the development plan and the starting point for determining planning applications. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
May I ask the Minister a question before he sits down? I agree with the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Deben. We want local authorities to read these things, but equally we have to have a mechanism to move things forward if they are not being moved forward. Will the Minister say a little more about what will happen? How far will an authority go? What will the Secretary of State be looking for? At what point will he intervene? It would be useful to have more information.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I think that it would be wise to furnish the noble Lord with some more detail. For example, I have some charts in my left hand. Perhaps I can reassure him by saying that there is a flowchart and a process in place. I reiterate that this is meant to be light touch. This is what is behind it—light touch, but with a programme and a plan.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Viscount. For a moment, I thought that he was going to mention regulation again.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in this short debate. One of the differences in the system in new Section 27 of the 2004 Act compared with the earlier legislation is that it will allow the Secretary of State to intervene on particular documents or in specific ways, rather than on the plan as a whole. As the Minister said, it might be more targeted.
I have not been able to get my mind around whether that will make the position more or less alarming—better or worse. However, the experience of some of us of the planning system is that actions taken by the Secretary of State or on behalf of the Secretary of State are not necessarily quicker or more efficient than actions taken by local planning authorities. We only have to look at the whole system of appeals, which, in the case of major appeals on the evidence that I have, is threatening to be snarled up. That is an indication that the Secretary of State may not have a huge resource available to him to step in and do things. I will just leave that.
I am aware that the whole plan-making system, of which this is just a part, needs review and I have tabled an amendment relating to that, which we will come to later in Committee. I was sent a document this morning that was issued yesterday by the Local Plans Expert Group, Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning. I look forward to having time to have a good look at it, because I believe that what we are talking about now is a detail and the sooner the Government can look at the local planning system as a whole and at ways of making it more streamlined, more effective and more efficient, the better. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Clause 133 allows the Mayor of London to step in and carry out default actions on plan-making when local authorities in London—London boroughs, presumably—are failing in some aspect of it. It also includes combined authorities, which is a new proposal that requires a little thought. I can understand that in combined authorities that have mayors the mayor may be thinking of becoming a sort of regional version of the Mayor of London, but in practice the position will be quite different, even when the mayors are elected. In combined authorities where there is not going to be a mayor, the position will be even more different.
The Greater London Authority is set up clearly by Act of Parliament as a freestanding authority and that is how it operates. Combined authorities were initially formed from the bottom up through a number of local authorities coming together and asking permission of the Secretary of State to set up the combined authority and to take on particular powers that they had negotiated between them. The situation is a little different now following the most recent legislation, the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act, which gives the Secretary of State more powers over the formation of combined authorities and their functions. It extends their possible functions beyond those that they originally could have had under the 2008 Act. However, despite that, the whole ethos and idea of combined authorities is expressed by the words “combined authorities”—they come together voluntarily to do things that they can do better together than separately. This proposal seems to suggest that, because they exist, the Secretary of State in future can use them as a convenient place to put in extra powers at will.
My question is as follows. There may well be an authority that is part of a combined authority and which is not carrying out its plan-making functions very well, and the Secretary of State wants to intervene. The implications of using that combined authority to carry out those plan-making functions—in relation to a development plan document or whatever—against the wish of the authority concerned need careful thought.
Combined authorities in most parts of England are not going to work unless they work on a voluntary basis in relation to the members of those combined authorities. I speak as a member of an authority that, in about an hour’s time, will be voting to join a combined authority or to join an application for a combined authority, so we have been looking at this carefully. The whole principle has to be of authorities coming together voluntarily, pooling powers in particular areas and doing so in a way that has consensus and agreement around the combined authority. If it allows some bureaucracy or some other council in the combined authority or a majority vote on the combined authority—whatever it is—to overrule a particular authority on something like this, I am not saying that it is going to destroy the combined authority, but it is going to make life much more difficult and change the whole culture and idea of coming together voluntarily as a combined authority.
That is the point that I am making. I do not know whether the Minister is going to be able to give me a coherent answer to that this evening because it is a slightly obscure and complicated issue, but I ask the Ministers to go away and ask their civil servants to think about it and come back with an answer to these genuine problems. I am not trying to be awkward at all on this; I understand the need to find ways of doing things in default in a sensible way if it is necessary. I beg to move.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the words of my noble friend Lord Greaves on these amendments. I reside in one of the combined authorities. In fact, it is perhaps the flagship combined authority: Greater Manchester. It consists of 10 planning authorities: 10 local authorities, all of which are planning authorities. I had regarded the introduction of this power of the Secretary of State to intervene as very much an attempt to make sure that the missing 30% of planning authorities caught up. I thought that it was more of a time-limited provision; that once all 100% of local planning authorities had got their plans properly approved, this particular provision would lapse, because they would, after all, from then onwards, be able to keep up.
Therefore, it is worth looking at the starting point. I do not know, without research that I have not done, whether any of the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester has failed to register its plans. It is a small number of local authorities working in very close concert, notwithstanding the considerable political divisions between the leadership of the different councils. I do not simply mean party divisions: long-standing rivalries, even in local authorities run by the same party, have been overcome to a remarkable extent in setting up the combined authority. As I said at the start, it is very much a flagship combination that has come together.
I very much support what my noble friend Lord Greaves said about the disruptive effect of basically giving them statutory powers to discipline each other for being naughty boys and girls. I ask the Minister to take that point away and consider whether this is the right vehicle. It might be perfectly in order for the Mayor of London to discipline one or other of the 33 boroughs in London—I am not aware of what their situation is—but I am sure that the Minister can imagine the noise that would be created if the current mayor were to step in on a borough of a different political persuasion. And after the mayoral election, the inverse situation might easily arise. So this is not without trouble ahead, when what the Minister actually wants to achieve is valid local plans as quickly as possible. That is an aim which I support, but he might have a mechanism that is more self-destructive than he realises.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Stunell, for their comments on this group of amendments. I note that the content of this group is not too dissimilar to the previous group. However, I do not believe that Amendments 89AA to 89KJ are necessary. Given the similarity of the amendments, I hope noble Lords will not mind if I respond to them collectively.
I hope noble Lords will bear with me just for a moment if I begin by explaining the purpose of Clauses 132 and 133 and Schedule 11, which provide the context for these amendments. Where the Secretary of State thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything necessary for them to do in connection with preparing, revising or adopting a development plan document—that is, the documents which comprise the local plan—the Secretary of State has existing powers under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 to intervene to prepare the document. However, where he does this, he is unable to hand back decision-making powers to the local authority if he wishes.
Clauses 132 and 133 and Schedule 11 are intended to address this by allowing for intervention by the Secretary of State in this scenario to be more targeted and proportionate. These measures give him options that enable more decisions to be made locally whenever possible—which I hope will be of some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Clause 133 and Schedule 11 would enable the Secretary of State to invite the Mayor of London or a combined authority, where applicable, to prepare, revise or approve a local plan as an alternative to the Secretary of State doing so. The mayor or combined authority could not do this unilaterally but only when invited to by the Secretary of State, and only where he considers that the local planning authority has not taken action despite having every opportunity to do so. The mayor and combined authorities provide strong and directly accountable city-region governance. This makes them an appropriate body to ensure that plans are in place across their areas.
The noble Lord’s amendments remove provisions set out in Clause 133 and Schedule 11 for a combined authority to prepare, revise and approve a development plan document where they are invited to do so by the Secretary of State. We have made it clear that we want authorities to take action themselves to get their plans in place. Authorities have had over a decade since the introduction in 2004 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act to produce a local plan, and the majority have done so.
However, I reiterate the points I made earlier—we need to take action where there is clear evidence that an authority is not producing a plan in a timely manner or keeping that plan up to date. We cannot stand by and allow failure to happen, especially given the importance of planning for supporting growth. We have made it clear that a combined authority will only prepare or revise a plan where an authority has failed or omitted to progress a plan and where the Secretary of State invites them to do so. Therefore, in those instances where a local plan needs to be put in place and the authority is failing to do so, it is right that a combined authority can be invited both to prepare a plan and to bring that plan into force.
I therefore hope that my responses provide reassurance to the noble Lords that the Government want to see authorities take action themselves to get local plans in place in the first instance. However, where authorities are failing to do this, it is right that we take action to get plans in place. I am aware that that summary and conclusion is very similar to that for the previous group of amendments.
Lord Greaves
Yes, my Lords—I am very clear about that as well. Having heard the Minister reply to the previous group of amendments and to the Clause 132 stuff on the changes to Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, I am prepared to come to the view that the new Section 27 will be better than the old one, for the reasons the Minister set out previously. I understand those arguments; I am really saying that I would rather that it was not there at all. However, given that it is replacing the previous one, I can understand that having a more targeted approach may be better. I am concerned that it may result in more interventions, because being more specific they will be easier to make, but we will find that out in due course.
As far as this group of amendments is concerned, I do not think that the Minister addressed my concerns. If the Secretary of State is going to intervene and take over the production of whatever it is—the local plan as a whole or particular parts of it—then he has to find a way of doing so. One can imagine a number of different ways that he might find. He will have to find some people to do it. I do not believe that the Secretary of State has the personal resources or the ministerial resources to do it himself. He could use the Planning Inspectorate to do it. I do not believe that it has any spare capacity. Using another local authority might be an answer.
Lord True
My Lords, at this hour I shall not venture on the patience of the Committee. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak very briefly. On the subject of the mayor intervening, I accept the answer given by my noble friend on Clause 133. If I have understood correctly, the mayor will not be encouraged to intervene except where there is manifest failure on the part of a local authority—and all he has to do is assent.
I suggested amendments simply to probe on the question of revision. Many London boroughs are well ahead with, or already revising, their plans. I do not think that we would particularly welcome much intervention from the mayor. Personally, I do not have great confidence in the GLA planning department. The Government seem rather more starry-eyed about its abilities than I am.
I hope that some caution will be exercised here. The mayor already has extremely extensive powers to intervene, although the current mayor has not used them. A number of very fruitful discussions are currently going on between London councils on housing—for example, Mayor Bullock is actively engaged with the GLA and with the Government. It would perhaps be preferable to let some of those discussions reach a conclusion before enacting even more powers for the mayor.
Clause 135 directly concerns the planning powers of the Mayor of London. My borough has one of the views in London that is protected by an Act of Parliament. I am very comfortable with the present arrangements whereby the sight lines in London are protected in the way they are. Given that there seems to be a bit of a mania in the GLA planning department at the moment for erecting tall buildings wherever possible—I do not know whether that will continue with the next mayor—I would like to see some caution exercised in this change, perhaps until we see where the land lies.
So although these are probing amendments, while these discussions are going forward, while the mayor has extensive powers and while there is the issue of sight lines, I ask the Government to reflect on whether it is necessary to proceed with these extra powers.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord True for his interest in improving the Bill, and I recognise his years of experience in local government. His amendments relate to clauses regarding the Mayor of London. I have spoken today about the importance of supporting growth through the planning system, and the Mayor of London plays a key role in harnessing this growth. I have also spoken about the importance of decisions being made at the local level wherever possible, and I believe my noble friend and I agree on that. I thank him for his comments on these clauses, but I do not believe that Amendments 89B to 89K are necessary, and I hope that I can provide some reassurance to noble Lords about the purpose of Clause 135.
Amendments 89B to 89E would remove the ability of the Mayor of London to revise a development plan document when invited to do so by the Secretary of State. First, I should like to clarify that Clauses 132 and 133 are concerned only with documents that comprise the local plan for an area; they are not concerned with the spatial development strategy for London—the so-called London Plan. I will also seek to clarify what is meant by “revise”, as I believe that these amendments may be based on a misinterpretation of its definition. At this late hour, perhaps I may write to my noble friend with the details of that definition.
I turn to Amendment 89F, for which I will again start with some context. For a development plan document to be adopted or approved, regardless of whether it has been prepared by a local authority or the Secretary of State, it must be submitted for examination. Following the examination, the local planning authority must publish the recommendations of the person appointed to examine the plan and their reasoning. The amendment would remove the ability of the Mayor of London to require a local planning authority to help ensure that local people are made aware of the recommendations of the person appointed to examine the plan.
Amendments 89G and 89H would disable the mayor’s ability to approve a development plan document. Approval is a necessary step if a plan is to come into force. Not doing so would fail to provide the community and others with the benefits and certainty that come from having a plan. Only once it is approved does a plan become part of the development plan for an area and the starting point for determining planning applications. I hope I have been clear that the Mayor of London may prepare or revise a plan only for a London borough that has failed to progress its own plan and only where the Secretary of State invites him to do so.
That brings me to my noble friend’s Amendment 89J. I suspect that this amendment does not fulfil the purpose that my noble friend intended. As currently drafted, where the Mayor of London has been invited to prepare a plan and the plan has been examined, he may direct an authority to consider adopting a document as an alternative to the mayor approving it himself. The change proposed by Amendment 89J does not alter the practical effect of the provision and the outcome would still put the authority under no obligation to adopt the plan where the mayor decides not to approve it himself.
I hope that I have given some brief reassurance to my noble friend and that he will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord True
My Lords, I accept that and look forward with interest to the letter. I leave on the record the comments I made about the ongoing discussions with the GLA and the future way we should operate. I did not get a specific reply on Clause 135 but, again, we can pursue that. I am happy to have discussions with my noble friend between now and Report and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.