English Devolution
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(3 days, 8 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his advice on Rutland. I am happy to confirm that. On the 500,000 number, it is very strange: ever since July, people have been saying repeatedly that we need a guideline number, but when we give a guideline number, they say, “No, not that number. That is not the right number”. I hope that was not how the Conservatives did the accounting, because that would be a problem.
The 500,000 figure is intended as a guideline; it is what works best for local areas. I imagine that some sort of de minimis size will be incorporated in the Minister’s thinking as we go through this programme. We feel that 500,000 is around the right size to get the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery and the scale of managing the strategic requirements in a local area; that is why we have said 500,000. We are looking for councils to come forward with their own proposals about how this works for their local areas. On the other question, this is intended to cover all areas of England, so they are all welcome to come forward with proposals—including Rutland.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for this Statement and I congratulate her and the Government on entering what are very difficult areas, as I remember well. One thing that has happened in the last 14 years—I know some noble Lords on the other Benches approved of this—was the abolition of the Audit Commission. Whatever people’s view about that, it has left nothing to give guidance and understanding to the combined authorities about audit. I hope that the Government will introduce something that gives clear guidance and authority to the audit process in these areas. Local people have the right to know that money invested there is being spent well and according to best value. Had we had that, I believe that the mayoral authority in Tees Valley may not have had the real problems that it has had, where we have ended up with 90% of the money that is invested, or of the contracts that are given there, being invested in two men who now live in Dubai. That is not best value for the public or what anybody intended in setting these issues up. I hope the Government will take hold of how we audit combined authorities.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend makes a good point. It is impossible to overstate the importance of having an accountable and transparent process for local government. I mentioned in my opening remarks that it is an absolute scandal that we have found ourselves in the position we have in relation to local government audit, with 1,000 audits outstanding—that is just not good enough. Accountability is absolutely vital. As well as a complete review of local government audit systems, and making sure that we have an audit service for all of local government that is fit for purpose, we will consult on something for mayoral combined areas. I do not know what it will be called, but it will be the equivalent of a local public accounts committee. We think that the work of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament is helpful and useful, and we will consult with local government on whether a local public accounts committee, along similar lines, would be useful.
Planning Committees: Reform
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I must admit that, at my local authority, you had to have training before you went on the planning committee, and I had assumed that that was the case everywhere. It is not. Part of the consultation on the working paper is the introduction of mandatory training. We are considering a wide range of implementation options, and we look forward to working with stakeholders. There are great examples of training around the country. However, it is inconsistent—more inconsistent than I had realised—and we need to find out where the best practice is so that we can work nationally on that issue. I totally agree with her point that the public will have more confidence if they know that people have had training.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that local plans are central to the whole planning process and a vital way of involving local people in what the overall future of their area should look like. Is she able to tell us how many of those local plans are actually up to date? What work is outstanding from local authorities to make sure that they all are up to date?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right to mention that. The Government have a stated intention of making sure that all local authorities have an up-to-date local plan in place. That was not the case when we came into government. A great deal of work has gone on with local authorities to ensure that they are making progress on their local plans. In the National Planning Policy Framework publication today, we see more enforcement steps that we intend to take if local authorities have not produced their local plans. The Secretary of State has been quite clear that, if encouragement does not work, we will use our powers to step in and do it for people. I hope local authorities will realise that the best way to make their local plans is with their councillors and their local communities.
Teesworks Programme: Audit
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the work the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, does in local government, and I understand the deep emotions that he talks about, because there are outstanding questions to which the public deserve answers. We understand that this issue, like all local issues, is emotive. This is evidenced by it being raised in this House and in the other place several times. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has asked this question before. This Government believe that scrutiny and transparency are important. However, we must carefully consider the mayor’s response, due in September, and we will consider any further action to take when we receive it. We are not ruling out any options, and one option could be requesting the NAO to review.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister knows, this is an issue that the people of Teesside take very strongly. When I was working in the Tees Valley across a number of constituencies during the election, they really wanted transparency. They want to know what has happened to the money that the public, via the Government and other agencies, have put in and whether the arrangement, which gives 90% of the benefit to two individuals and only 10% to the public, can stand up. I appreciate that the Minister will bring the report, but will he also ask his department to look at an overall system of audit and accountability, because that disappeared when the Audit Commission disappeared, and there is no coherent across-the-board system for the devolved mayors. We want to give them more power, but if they get more power there must be transparency and proper accountability.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for raising those important issues. It is true that the previous Government scrapped the Audit Commission and replaced it with a fragmented, locally led audit regime that is failing. This Government are committed to overhauling local audit and restoring better value for money for taxpayers. We are looking closely at all the evidence, and we will set out our plans, including legislation, shortly. I must remind the House that until we get the response of the Mayor of Tees Valley we cannot explore the options. We will wait for the response to the 26 recommendations which the mayor was asked to look at and then take further action.
Teesworks Project: Audit
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Baroness Swinburne (Con)
I can assure this House that the mayor has accepted all the recommendations in that report and is enacting them now. We have asked for a report in six months’ time on how much progress has been made. We expect that there will be significant progress, including any renegotiation of those contracts.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I am disappointed by the Minister’s response. In the debate, I thought that we had established that the mayor was dealing with only a limited number of the recommendations, particularly on governance. There is a whole raft of others that he did not address in his letter. Neither we nor the public in Tees Valley have heard from the Government on what they will do to ensure that proper procedures, which have been undertaken by other local authorities for generations, are adhered to in Tees Valley. Can the Minister reassure us that there will now be a tendering and procurement process that is understandable in the public sector, even though this is a public/private arrangement? Will that take place, particularly given that the Secretary of State just last week transferred to two of the development corporations set up within the Tees Valley money from the local authorities without consulting them?
Baroness Swinburne (Con)
I assure the House that all procedures are being followed and, where necessary, they are being tightened as a result of the review. Therefore, where the recommendations need changes to be made, they will be made. Indeed, one of the recommendations affects DLUHC and another, more broadly, affects departments in central government. We are dealing with those now, including one for new systems of governance.
Local Regeneration: Industrial Areas
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
That this House takes note of the case for local regeneration of former industrial areas across the whole United Kingdom, and the challenges constraining such regeneration, including in relation to local government.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege and pleasure to introduce this debate, partly, of course, because it gives me the chance to talk about the north-east again, the contribution that previous generations from that region have made to the prosperity of this country, and what we can do now—in the region and nationally—to give this generation and future generations real opportunity.
I grew up with coal mining, shipbuilding and steelmaking dominating community life. My early working life saw those industries in decline, and I worked with people in communities whose lives were totally changed because of the decline of those industries. I am not necessarily saying I regret the loss of all of them, because people like me—women—were not exactly important in the industry. We were important in terms of looking after the men when they came off their shift, but that was not the sort of life I wanted.
I became Member of Parliament for North West Durham in 1987 and by then all the pits in the constituencies had closed, although we had a lot of open cast mining and the Consett steelworks had closed in 1984. Consett was the largest town in the constituency, built to accommodate the workers at the steel mill. It was seen as the most efficient steel mill in the country at the time of its closure, but accessibility was never as easy and straightforward there as it was for the port in Teesside, so it was closed to keep Redcar steel mills open. Some of the workforce from Consett, particularly from management, was transferred there, as were some of the fittings.
The work to remove the infrastructure in Consett took place very quickly. A lot of the funding from that came from the EU to clear the contaminated land. Steel production delivers very contaminated land. Things were not very sophisticated in those days. Essentially the top soil was buried, meaning that the Environment Agency had to monitor levels of contamination on a regular basis, alongside strict warnings to any local farmer who thought that it might be a good idea to graze his cattle that if he did so there would be no ability to use the milk or the meat from it because of the level of cadmium poisoning that there would be.
We dealt with so many of those aspects. We also dealt with a totally changed population, with more women working than ever before and more women working than men. I and my neighbour and good friend Giles Radice, who subsequently came to this House and died last year—I miss him enormously—worked with the local council on regeneration projects, with new industrial estates being built around Consett and on other land that was not contaminated. We also worked on long-term plans for the main site. Project Genesis is still going. It is a public/private partnership and, yes, it has taken a long time to redevelop that site.
Therefore, noble Lords will understand our disappointment when British Steel decided to close Redcar. When I was Local Government Minister in the 1997 to 2001 Parliament, I knew of the importance of the private sector in local government services and in regeneration projects. I introduced the concept that has been forgotten about, best value—how did we ensure that the public got the best out of partnerships and contracts with the private sector? We legislated on it and so on but, unfortunately, in too many regards it has been forgotten. From the recent report on the Teesworks project—it is on the old steelworks site in Redcar that my folk gave up their jobs for, as they saw it—it is clear that best value has not happened. I regret this enormously and am anxious that the Government address what has gone wrong with governance, the nature of contracts and procurement in what are essentially public/private partnerships, and in transparency of regeneration projects that are as complex as this—and they are complex.
Teesworks was initially, in 2020, a 50:50 joint venture partnership. There were two private sector businessmen who had acquired an option on part of the land at Redcar Bulk Terminal, and they then used that as leverage in the compulsory purchase of the wider set of land. The following month, they became formal joint venture partners with the South Tees Development Corporation; there was no tendering and no procurement process—certainly nobody was told that there were procurement processes, and I am sure they would have been after the complaints.
To cut a long story short, without any public announcement, the joint venture was changed in Companies House in November 2021 to a 90:10 deal in favour of the private businesses rather than the public sector. Difficult stories then circulated about the price of land, the complexity of the deals, the lack of transparency, the apparent substantial profit made without any private investment on a site of such public importance, the size of the public investment with no return at this stage to the public, and the lack of transparency to evidence value for money. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up set up an inquiry that made 28 recommendations, which raised significant questions. I will sum it up with a quotation:
“Based on the evidence from the review the governance and financial management arrangements are not of themselves sufficiently robust or transparent to evidence value for money”.
The mayor has responded to the concerns about governance, but there are, unfortunately, significant gaps in the response, and we now wait for the Secretary of State’s response.
I am devastated that this programme has ended up with so many questions and that there is not a better story to tell. I want the project to succeed; we desperately need regeneration and activity that can tackle the deep problems that the de-industrialisation of our region has caused for so many families. I made a speech here two weeks ago when I talked about the latest report on child poverty from the region that I am involved with. We see the activities of the North East Mayor and the Tees Valley Mayor as critical, in future, to a regional response to the mission of enabling every child to have opportunities to develop to their full potential. The previous debate from my noble friend Lord Blunkett emphasised that it is precisely in these areas that attainment is worst and that the gap between those who do well and those who do badly is biggest. Deindustrialisation has real consequences; in Middlesbrough, which is part of Tees Valley, 41% of children since 2014 are now in child poverty. I am really keen to work with the Mayor of Tees Valley—the noble Lord, Lord Houchen—on tackling these issues, which are partly a consequence of this deindustrialisation. The report must be taken seriously, and the Government need to address some of the ways that systems have failed.
I am sure the Minister will say that she cannot answer my questions until the Secretary of State has replied, but it is really important that if she cannot answer today, she writes to me—she will gather by the end of the questions when I want her to write to me about the answers.
First, will the Government ensure that the terms of their current joint venture partnership with Teesworks are renegotiated, as recommended by the report? Will they also ensure that any future contracts for work are properly procured, with best value for the taxpayer assured? Will the Government consider audit and scrutiny proposals for all combined authorities that secure best value for the public purse? Will they also enable the National Audit Office to further review the activities of the Tees Valley Combined Authority? I hope that the Minister will press on the Secretary of State that we need his response before purdah for the May elections.
Regeneration of difficult, contaminated, former industrial sites is not easy. It takes time and, I am afraid, considerable investment. In regions such as the north-east, however, this is still a major issue years after major industrial works have closed. I understand that democracy demands a level of openness and transparency that some in the private sector find inhibiting; it takes time, because people have to be consulted. However, I genuinely believe that, with proper public oversight, accountability and transparency, we can get economic regeneration that is sustainable.
The effect of deindustrialisation is devastating for the whole community and, if not effectively tackled, can blight future generations. Local, regional and national government all have responsibilities, but we have to work together to meet them. I look for that commitment from the Government today.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I thank everyone for the debate. It is probably presumptuous of me to say so, but it was refreshing to be in a debate with so many people who found their allegiance to the north-east region. It is unusual in this House so I welcome it, but I also welcome the comments from other parts of the country.
I am really pleased that the Minister has now got this brief and is, I hope, determined to get stuck into it. There is so much to do. I am pleased that she will go to Bishop Auckland. I know it very well, as many of my family live there and were brought up there. She will find that there is a remarkable local benefactor, Jonathan Ruffer, who bought the bishop’s castle and the artwork. I think he says he spends about £10,000 a day. He has done so for the past decade and continues to do so. I know he is pleased about the levelling-up money, but he also thinks that it is not before time. Indeed, at a public meeting he threatened to cease putting any money in unless the Government got serious about the consultation with local people and what goes on with the levelling-up money.
We had some fascinating insights into things that work, but also into things that do not. My good friend—I am sure he does not mind me calling him that—the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has done some remarkable work on rebuilding communities. I do not agree with everything because I think that if systems do not work, like they are not working in Tees Valley, people suffer. We need systems and processes that recognise who people are, where they are from, what they can do and what they can contribute. That is what I call for and what I am keen to see.
Regeneration in post-industrial sites is complex and difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, gave an interesting and important example from Newcastle city centre of just what it takes to redevelop a brownfield site, but we have to get on with it and find ways to have public sector investment and understanding of how to make sure that these things are accountable, in a way that local people understand alongside private investment that they can benefit from. That has got unbalanced in Tees Valley. I think Tees Valley is part of the north-east, which is why I was a bit confused when told that we are going to have a new mayor for the whole of the north-east. We are actually having a mayor for the bit of the north-east that is not Tees Valley, but Tees Valley is still technically part of the region.
I hope that the Minister will go away, think about these things and come back to us with real ways in which we can move forward together so that people around the country get the benefit they need. I will send her a copy of our child poverty report because, unless the Government address that, they will not get good regeneration.
Motion agreed.
Domestic Violence Refuges: Charities and Local Government
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I would be more than happy to meet the noble Baroness to learn about that, and I thank her for everything she is doing in her county. As recently as this weekend, we heard so much about violence against women. The Home Office is taking this issue extremely seriously and a large amount of money is going into extra police training, particularly on tackling domestic abuse. Some £3.3 million has been committed over the next three years to support delivery of Domestic Abuse Matters training to police officers. Let us hope that this changes things.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister says, there is currently no sign of domestic abuse being overcome and things changing, and recent reviews of serious cases are really quite scary. This is not just about local authorities, which are doing a good job but are cash strapped, but charities. A number of seriously good and important charities in this arena have nearly or actually gone bust. Action against Violence and Abuse, a major charity that worked with women who had experienced violence and abuse, and which supported them in a range of ways, went out of business last month for no other reason than it could not raise sufficient funds. Will the Minster discuss this issue with other Ministers? The situation is now very serious: such charities cannot be funded to continue their work, and that will have serious consequences for the women involved.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The charitable sector is a really important partner in this. That has been noted in the amount of money given to police and crime commissioners to tackle this issue, part of which is spent with charities, other stakeholders and community groups. This Government have supported charities through this very difficult crisis, in particular with energy costs. We are totally committed to supporting the charitable sector on not only this issue but others, and we will do everything we can to do so because it is an important part of delivery.
Local Enterprise Partnerships: Funding
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
One important aspect of moving LEP functions into local authorities and mayoral combined authorities is making sure they cover appropriate economic geographies so they can deliver for those areas. In having proper democratic accountability, it will be clear to local businesses and local people who is responsible for economic development in their area.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, is it not clear that in the Teesside mayoral area, on some of the economic development programmes, we have seen less democratic accountability and less transparency about what is going on? The Government instituted a review that was supposed to report in July on this and we have heard nothing yet. We want more electoral and democratic accountability and more transparency. When is the report going to come out?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, there has been a great deal of success in devolution to Teesside and the mayoral combined authority there. The noble Baroness is right that we have instituted a report into some of the processes that have been undertaken. I do not have a date for her, but we are looking at it very carefully and we will publish the report when we are in a position to do so.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I am somewhat intimidated to follow three women who have spoken so powerfully and who I know have contributed enormously to taking forward women’s health in this country. I will not talk about women and health, and I will not even talk about a subject that your Lordships have heard me discuss before—the experience of women who have suffered sexual exploitation and violence—although I am still doing work on that through projects in Yorkshire. Instead, I will concentrate on international affairs.
Before doing so, I join the tributes to Baroness Boothroyd. Betty was a great family friend and would visit us in the north-east before I became an MP, so when I came here and she was running for Speaker, she gave me the firm instruction that I and Mo Mowlam, with whom she knew I was very friendly, had to sit either side of her when she was going to be dragged to the Chair so that we could look after her handbag. Of course, we did exactly as we were instructed.
I also welcome today’s maiden speech. I know Kate—the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard—because we both work as trustees for GambleAware. However, as she is its chair, she is very much my senior there, so I bow to her greater knowledge and understanding. I know that she will have a major contribution to make to this House. I wish her good luck with her speech; I know how terrifying these things are.
I will speak about international issues and the role that the Government have in relation to international development. Despite ambitious commitments that we were part of in the sustainable development goals, progress on women’s rights globally remains frustratingly slow. Indeed, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said recently that gender equality is still “300 years away”, so none of us will ever be there to see it.
According to the sustainable development report from last year, globally, 26% of women across the world who are in a long-term relationship—641 million women—experience violence at some stage of that relationship. Further:
“In 2021, nearly one in five young women were married before the age of 18 … 35% and 28% of young women were married in childhood, respectively in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia”,
and
“Up to 10 million more girls are likely to become child brides by 2030 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the 100 million girls projected to be at risk before the pandemic.”
These things are going on. Over
“200 million girls and women today have been subjected to female genital mutilation”,
and
“As of … January 2022, the global share of women in lower and single houses of national parliaments reached 26.2% up from 22.4% in 2015”—
but essentially, that is still only a quarter. We still have a lot to do.
Many people have heard me pay tribute to Voluntary Service Overseas on numerous occasions for how it made me, enabling me to learn about myself as well as the world. I will say a little bit about its work. I am proud that VSO, for several years now, has worked with women and girls as a priority across all its programming. However, the tragedy is that government funding for organisations such as VSO has reduced significantly, which means that work with women and girls across the board is substantially reduced, despite the very good new publication from the Foreign Office about the international women and girls strategy. This is tragic, because not only does it mean that, while some of the issues I have been discussing may well be addressed in some countries, they now will not be addressed in others—VSO has certainly had to reduce the number of countries it is working in—but it also means in some countries the continuation of violence, abuse and war. The consequences of women’s involvement on the fringes of those sorts of conflict mean that those families will often seek to leave, and they will become the asylum seekers and refugees of the future.
This is short-term policy on our behalf, and we really need to address it. We now know that much of even the reduced budget is now being spent in this country on refugees and defence issues rather than in the developing world and on these development issues. I am proud of the work that international development organisations are continuing to try to do, but, my goodness, we should be doing more and we need to do more, because what happens here has a major effect on women around the world.
Levelling Up: Funding Allocation
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we do not know of a better method for capital funding. There is not just the levelling-up fund but a suite of funding going out to local authorities for capital projects, including the towns funds, the community ownership funds, the freeports and the UK shared prosperity fund, which is given out in terms of percentages.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, many people see child poverty as the measure of where levelling-up funding should be targeted. Why then in the north-east did no authority north of the Tees get anything? What do authorities such as County Durham have to do to be recognised by the Government?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the north-east got the third-highest level of funding per head of capital across the country. It is up to local authorities to bid for their priorities; I am sorry if they did not get them, but if they did not bid for them then I hope they will do so in the third round.
Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I am sorry; the Minister must respond to each question from the Back Benches.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I knew that this would be a very passionate debate.
The first question from my noble friend was: why did the Secretary of State not turn this down? He did not turn it down because he took his time and read this very large report. Unlike the noble Baroness opposite, I am afraid that I have not had the time since lunchtime today to read it—but I have it and I will read it this weekend. So, why did the Secretary of State not turn this down? He did not turn it down because he read the evidence, he thought that it was sound and he agreed with the inspector’s report. The inspector is independent and this is about a planning application. He did his job and, as I said, the Secretary of State agreed with him.
On the rest of the world not agreeing with what we are doing, I have not seen the rest of the world having net-zero mines for coking coal. We are going to do that. We are showing the rest of the world how it should be producing this commodity, which is still going to be required to produce steel in the near future. That is extremely important.
On the other issues around where the coal will be sold to and how that will be done, this is not a Government-supported project; it is from the private sector. Private sector operators put in the planning application and it was decided on in the normal way. The Secretary of State read all the information and decided that he would support it.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, can I question the Minister from the perspective of steel? I represented a seat that used to have the most efficient steel-making company in the country, in Consett in County Durham, but the Government were quite happy when it closed and all those very good jobs were lost.
My contacts in the steel industry tell me that some of the coal is so full of sulphur that the industry in this country will not use it. Some of it can be adapted into coking coal, which it will be able to use, but some will not. The industry is concerned that it is already trying to move to decarbonise the steel-making process and that, by the time this all comes into fruition, it is hoped that it will be further down the road and not need anything like the 15% that the Government and the application are talking about. My contacts also tell me that the European Union is much further down the road on decarbonising the steel-making process than we are. Indeed, one of the companies working on this is working with the European Union on that decarbonisation. In these circumstances, the Government are putting the reputation of the steel industry at some risk, because it believes that the major efforts it is trying to make to decarbonise will be overshadowed by this decision, and that the pressure will be on the industry to take more coking coal, which will not help it to decarbonise.
There are other aspects of this; I accept that it is extremely complex. I have not read the inspector’s report, although I too am used to Ministers having to take decisions around such things. Can the Government tell us when they expect the coking coal to be processed? When will that actually happen? How far on will the British steel industry be on decarbonisation at that point? What is going to happen if the EU is in front of us on decarbonisation and is therefore not going to accept the coking coal from this mine, which will mean that it has to be exported even further? These are serious issues which ought to be taken into account. I accept that they are complex and include judgment, but I think the Government have made the wrong judgment.