Homelessness: Temporary Accommodation

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much indeed for his contribution in this area—not just in the House but very much outside it. I take his comments seriously. As he rightly says, prevention is at the heart of this complex issue. It is clearly not a simple issue: this country has faced this problem over a period of time. As I say, it is very much at the centre of the Government’s thinking and all agencies contribute to it. We have trailblazer areas looking at this, and Crisis and Shelter, for example, are on our advisory committee. Rough sleeping is something that the Government are very much committed to ending.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will recognise that some of us are deeply underwhelmed by the ambition to reduce homelessness by only half by 2022. We were able to reduce rough sleeping by two-thirds between 1998 and 2000, and we know what needs to be done. There needs to be proper accommodation for rough sleepers, and he should know every night what is available and how many more rough sleepers there are than beds available. There also needs to be mental health and detox support. This is not unknown territory or a secret. We know how to sort it. Why do the Government not just get on and do it so that people are safer?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness went on, she began to exhibit just how complex an issue this is. It is not simple. It is an issue partly to do with addiction and with mental health, and partly about people coming out of secure environments such as the forces and prisons. We are working with the Ministries of Defence and Justice, which are central to this. It is not a small ambition to halve homelessness by 2022 and eliminate it totally by 2027. I look forward to seeing support and ideas from around the House on how we can tackle a very complex issue.

Surrey County Council: Financial Issues

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, let me restate—indeed, this was confirmed by Councillor Hodge yesterday—that there is no deal. There was never any question of special arrangements for Surrey; it is subject to the same rules as every other local authority. It can apply for consideration for the business rates retention scheme for 2018-19; it may wish to do that or not—I do not know—but it is open to that authority as it is to all authorities, whatever their political complexion. That is the position.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder if the Minister understands that there is real concern that Surrey had less need of the additional money for social care than any other authority in the country because it has the lowest proportion of population with entitlement to publicly funded social care. I know that the Minister is coming to the north-east soon, and I hope that before he does so he will put pressure on the Chancellor to ensure that the additional money for social care is allocated on the basis of need. In the north-east, there is not a single authority where less than 65% of those eligible for social care require publicly funded social care, as against 1% in Surrey. Again, the tax base in the north-east is much lower because of the lower property base and ability to raise council tax. This is an issue of need around the country, and there should not be any special deals for Surrey without addressing the needs of places such as the north-east.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am very much looking forward to my visit to the north-east, which the noble Baroness kindly mentioned, which as she knows includes a visit to domestic abuse services. On the finance settlement, the Government’s and therefore the department’s position is very much that we wanted Surrey to come to the agreement that more than 97% of councils came to. It chose not to do so and therefore is outside of that agreement. When I am in the north-east I shall be in listening mode, but I hope that the noble Baroness is not exaggerating my powers to persuade councillors.

Homelessness Reduction Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests in this matter. I chair an organisation called Changing Lives, which is active in this area of work and based in the north-east of England, although we work way beyond the north-east. I am also involved with Lloyds Bank Foundation. We fund a number of small charities which work with the homeless.

I am delighted to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, Bob Blackman, and those charities, particularly Crisis and St Mungo’s, who have been driving the changes in the Bill. I am also delighted to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. When I was responsible for tackling rough sleepers between 1997 and 2001, far too many were ex-service people. It was clear that that was not something that the Armed Forces had been thinking about before discharge, particularly for squaddies who had struggled a bit before they got into the Armed Forces and might find life difficult once they left. We had a particular programme for that. The Ministry of Defence Minister with responsibility for veterans used to come to all our planning meetings on tackling rough sleeping, and the head of the Rough Sleepers Unit, as it then was, went especially to Catterick to work with the Army on how it could use preventive methods before a problem arose. I know that, since then, lots more work has been done. I was always grateful that we could engage actively with the Ministry of Defence to consider those issues.

The Bill is very important. It will put on the statute book measures to help to tackle homelessness. Prevention and advice for all, including the single homeless, is very important; the Bill provides new support to those who are not entitled to assistance under current legislation, particularly the single homeless, which is the area in which I have the most knowledge and experience. Inevitably, services have grown up to tackle single homelessness but, too often, they pick people up when they are already sleeping rough and facing a whole range of problems.

The new prevention duty in the Bill, which extends to 56 days the period for someone being threatened with homelessness, is also very sensible. It will give local authorities time to plan and work with landlords and others to try to ensure that eviction does not take place, as well as introduce measures to deal with the family or individual if it comes to pass. The new duty on other public bodies that encounter those threatened with homelessness or who are homeless to refer them to local authority homeless teams is also important. When I was Minister for social exclusion in 2007-08, we mapped those individuals with multiple needs in one London borough and, unsurprisingly, found that they would turn up at a range of organisations from A&E to mental health services, from addiction services to the police, as well as the homeless services. Most of them were without long-term accommodation, but no service took overall responsibility. It was out of that scoping work that we developed the programme that we called ACE—government is really good at all these acronyms; it stood for adults with chronic exclusion, if I remember rightly—to find more effective ways to work with people in a more holistic way. That work has subsequently been taken up by the Big Lottery, which is funding about 12 programmes around the country called Fulfilling Lives that are about helping local services to address the needs of the most excluded in a more holistic way. The charity which I chair is running one of those programmes.

The Bill will not solve this, but it will at least mean that agencies talk to one another about accommodation needs. Most of us could give horrendous examples of people who are in need but are turned away because they have not turned up at the right service that day. We have to change the way in which services deal with someone who is homeless, addicted or whatever and treat them as a whole person, recognising that they have to bring together the services that they are going to need.

I welcome the Bill and will work for its speedy passage. But—there is bound to be a but—in terms of the scandalous rise in homelessness and rough sleeping in recent years I find it modest. Its provisions will be important, but much more needs to be done in a structural way. Homelessness has not risen because the Bill was not in place: it has done so because of decisions that have been taken, many of which the noble Lord, Lord Best, spoke about. These need to be addressed in order to ensure that homelessness really is a thing of the past. Are Ministers asking themselves about the effect on homelessness of the withdrawal from some local authorities of the fund for supported housing and supporting people who are vulnerable in housing? Three authorities in the north-east have now withdrawn the fund since the Government increased cuts to local authorities and stopped ring-fencing it. Our experience is that many people are now being pushed into the city areas because the services they had been used to in their own local authorities are simply not available any more. This rise in homelessness in the cities is putting real pressure on them.

Are Ministers asking themselves what effect the changes in local housing allowance will have on the availability of rented accommodation to those who are struggling? Not all of them will be seen as vulnerable, but many will be struggling because rent levels are becoming so high and landlords will pull out of offering housing to those who depend on public support. Why are so many housing associations pulling out of supported accommodation and asking the voluntary sector to take over those responsibilities? I am a bit scared by the number of housing associations that are coming to the charity I chair saying: “We are going to pull out of this because we cannot afford to do it. Will you take it on”? The Government tell me that I have to be absolutely sure that the board which I lead appreciates the challenges of funding and does not undertake things if it does not know it will be able to fund them, so I am a bit anxious. We spent some time last Friday looking at this. Our chief executive is always enthusiastic and optimistic, which is great, but we had to say to him that there has to be very good due diligence. If the housing association is saying it cannot afford to do it, will we be able to?

We also know that the market will not step into much of this work. When the funding was earmarked in George Osborne’s last Budget, all the money allocated to voluntary, not-for-profit organisations for bringing empty homes back into use was put for developers to use. Surprise, surprise, the programme virtually stopped. It was suspended by the Homes and Communities Agency in terms of giving grants to not-for-profit organisations, in the hope that developers would take this on. However, this was not their priority or what they wanted to do, so the HCA has now reinserted and ring-fenced some money and reopened that programme. However, this has slowed down my organisation’s work of recovering and bringing back into use empty homes, which our service users help to refurbish and then move into. That affects our business model, but we will try to get into it again. We have been developing this area of housing partly because we know that enabling the single homeless—even those with multiple needs—to go straight into independent tenancies works, if they are properly supported. That is another reason why I am asking the Government to keep an eye on what is happening to the supported housing fund. If that is withdrawn, people who are put into independent tenancies will struggle.

It is also because local authorities are saying to us that they are finding it more and more difficult to meet the cost of hostel provision. They are sort of giving us warning that this area may have to go, in the cuts that they see coming down the road. My own local authority has just announced another £65 million of cuts for this year. They know that more will come next year. With an ageing population in the county of Durham, more and more money has to go to social care. This is not part of that priority, so hostels will begin to be more difficult to fund effectively. That is why we need more independent housing for the most vulnerable, but that is also becoming hugely challenging. I know that the Government have been exploring social investment bonds to deal with some of this, but I urge caution. Experience of these bonds has so far led all the charities that I am talking to to approach them with caution because they are proving exceptionally difficult to develop. Even though the strength of the SIB is that it will be there for six or eight years, it is challenging for charities, particularly smaller ones, to get involved in this.

In this period of local government cuts, the extra money is welcome, but is it going to be enough? I support others who are saying that the two-year review of the Bill will be very important. I hope that in that time the Government will look honestly at what it costs to prevent someone becoming homeless and really keep an eye on it so that it is kept at a level that ensures local authorities can develop. I hope this is not just a move to put all the blame on to local authorities. I am sure that it is not; I am not that cynical. However, we have to demonstrate that that is the case.

The Bill is welcome and, as I say, I enthusiastically support it. However, it will not be sufficient to end homelessness. I have raised some issues. Other Members have raised and will raise others. I hope that the Government recognise that there is very wide support across this House to tackle homelessness and, indeed, to end it. I believe that we can virtually end homelessness. From my period in government, I know what needs to be done about rough sleeping and what you can do to bring the number down to many fewer people than is the case at present. Many people in this House have experience of both historic developments and current activity. If the Government are wise, they will harness that experience—dare I say expertise, or are we still saying that we do not need expertise? I hope not. I hope that the Government will harness the expertise and the experience in this House to tackle homelessness in that more holistic way which is essential if we want to get anywhere near ending it.

Homelessness

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I again refer Members to my interests. I am chair of an organisation called Changing Lives, which is based in the north-east but operates in other parts of the country, too. I was Minister for homelessness—among other things, including local government—from 1997 to 2001, which was when we introduced the real drive around rough sleeping and reduced it by more than two-thirds within two years. We had a very clear strategy during that time, where we worked very closely with local authorities and were very successful in reducing rough sleeping. I used to ring up nearly every day and ask not only how many beds were available but how many detox beds, because unless you offered those, you were not going to crack the problem. That is one of the problems today.

In this very short speech in a debate that I congratulate my noble friend on securing, I want to concentrate on the plight of women. Women have been the hidden group in homelessness, and indeed among people with complex needs. In 2007-08, my last job in government was to return to issues such as this as Minister for Social Exclusion. I set up what we called the ACE pilots, looking in a new way at adults with chronic exclusion—I think that is what “ACE” stood for. The question was how to do that in a more holistic way. However, we did not address it in a gender-based way, and that was a mistake. Now, the charity I chair does much more gender-based work, and it is absolutely critical. We run a programme in Gateshead in Newcastle called Fulfilling Lives, a programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund to look at people with complex needs, and we have a significant number of women with whom we are working in this regard. Every one of them has had significant abuse either as a child or as an adult—in most cases, both. That means they do not talk about it in certain settings, so some of our workers who had worked with them for years but had never worked with them in a gender-based way got a real shock when they began to talk much more about the experiences that had brought them to where they were.

That has convinced me that we must take a whole new look at how we do things and how we address these issues. You cannot leave those women in mixed hostels. Indeed, work came out over the summer from a very good organisation called Agenda, which has been brought together from about 60 charities that work with women in this area, looking at and highlighting the number of women who have to sell themselves as sex objects to get accommodation, food and the drugs and the alcohol on which they may well be dependent. This is simply not acceptable and we have to do something about it.

The DCLG Select Committee report last month acknowledged the real issue of women and that we have not been looking at it effectively. I simply say to the Government that this is about issues of mental health, addiction and abuse. Unless we begin to look at this matter much more carefully, especially at how we collect the figures—we do not really know the extent because we do not collect the figures effectively—family life in the next generation will continue to be blighted. With regard to the lives of these women, I say to Ministers: come and have a look at some of the work we are doing. It is remarkable but, my goodness, it is difficult.

The Government have to look at the housing benefit issue and give us the report quickly, because people need assurance that the refuges and hostels that are funded from housing benefit will be exempt in future. We need that assurance quickly. We need more mental health workers to work with these people, and we need gender-based services and approaches. There is much more that I would like to say, but my time is up. I hope we will keep coming back to this, and I hope Ministers will engage with folk like me because we really want to address the issues.

Fracking

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the code of conduct followed and the procedure in the United Kingdom, with the HSE and the Environment Agency, are among the best in the world. We have every reason to believe that fracking is totally safe and that any risks can be effectively managed.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister recognise that the Government have given considerable comfort to local residents who object to wind farms? Are the Government going to give the same comfort to residents who object to fracking?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that there is a strong local element to the decision that has just been taken. The Government are of the view that a strong local element is important.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I take seriously the issue that somehow democratic accountability is being reduced. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made the point in speaking to his amendment on the first day of Committee—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, also expressed this view—that if we had had fixed-term, five-year Parliaments there would have been a reduced number of elections. I cannot accept that that automatically follows. Taking up the point of democratic accountability, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, cannot ignore the possibility—or, more, the probability—that there would have been Parliaments that did not run their full term of five years. Perhaps February 1974 would have been an example, or October 1974, or the 1951 election.

My noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames also indicated that it is important to put the ducks—as they were described by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—in perspective. It is almost inevitable that during the past 65 years some Parliaments would not run their full course. You cannot say that every Parliament would automatically run the five years. Indeed, that is why we have the provisions in Clause 2 of the Bill.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

The Minister seems to be making some of the points that I know colleagues have been anxious about. Governments and Parliament have to respond to what is going on in the outside world and with the electorate, so it is difficult to be absolutely precise in legislation as to when things should happen and be rigid about that. That is the objection of many people to the Bill. In a constitution which has evolved and which develops, the Government are trying to bring absolute certainty, when democracy does not bring certainty and should not be expected to. That is why we are having such interesting times in the Middle East at the moment.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Baroness’s final point is a huge leap. As I explained at Second Reading—as did the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington—there is a spectrum between the complete flexibility that you have under the present system, which is subject to a maximum term, and the system in, I think, Norway, where there are quite rigid terms in which there is no way out if anything happens. There was a consensus that if we moved to fixed-term Parliaments, as I believe is right and as is proposed by the Bill, there should nevertheless be a mechanism to call an early election if certain circumstances arose. There was some degree of consensus on that. When we come to Clause 2, we will debate those mechanisms. I merely observe that the Constitution Committee thought that the mechanisms were fit for purpose in terms of what we are dealing with.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and my noble friend Lord Rennard for introducing these amendments. I say in respect not just of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, but of a series of amendments as we go through the Bill that it is important that there will proper scrutiny. The amendments that have been tabled already indicate that although the Bill is relatively short it is important, and that most if not all its key components will be addressed. We look forward to those debates.

I think that there is a consensus across the Chamber, as I think there was on a number of occasions—although it was sometimes difficult to believe it—during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, that it is important that we try to look at ways in which we can increase turnout and participation in elections. No matter which party we belong to, or even if we belong to none at all, I think that we recognise the importance of trying to increase turnout.

It is probably fair to say—no doubt those opposite will correct me if I am wrong, because they were in government and responsible for introducing them—that the greater availability of postal votes is more a response to decreasing turnouts than a contributory factor as my noble friend Lord Cormack suggested. It is also fair to raise concerns, as has been done, about the security of postal voting, but it should be recorded that measures have been introduced during the past couple of years to ensure that postal votes are properly verified. Some of the debate which has taken place in recent days and weeks about the timing of the counts for the Scottish Parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections in May has been coloured by the fact that returning officers are now very conscious of the time that will quite properly be taken in verifying postal votes.

My noble friend Lord Rennard indicated that this issue has never been properly debated in Parliament; I hope that he feels that it has had a reasonable airing today. It is clear from the contributions that have been made that there are arguments both for and against moving the polling day from the traditional Thursday to another day and, as the amendments would foreshadow, to weekends. There has been debate, too, on the cases for and against the holding of elections on more than one day. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said that if one was to have polling day on a Saturday it would raise religious issues for some faiths. Equally, I can think of places, not least in my native Scotland, where if voting was only on a Sunday there would be difficulties. That led noble Lords to consider the possibility of voting over two days. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, indicated some of the practical issues to which that would give rise. I do not think for a moment that they are insuperable, but they would certainly have to be addressed if we were to hold elections on more than one day.

A number of issues have been raised. The previous Government instigated a significant test of opinion, by way of a consultation held in 2008, on the very subject of moving elections to weekends. The consultation sought views from a range of groups on whether elections should be moved from the traditional Thursday to one or both days of the weekend and whether this would improve access and opportunity for voting. There were diverging views on this issue. While it is fair to say that there was a balance of opinion in favour among members of public who responded to the consultation, the majority of respondents did not favour a move to weekend voting.

It is not obvious from that survey, which was published in March of last year, that such a move would make it easier for electors to vote. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, pointed out, there is nothing in statute that says that polling day should be a Thursday. I am sufficiently old, and enough of a political anorak, to remember a lot of local elections taking place on every day of the week. I think that I am correct in recalling during one of our debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill someone on the opposition Benches saying that they were once a candidate, or an agent, in a local election that had taken place on Saturday.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

In the Local Government Bill in 1998, we made provision for significant pilots to take place on this and on different ways of increasing participation. It may be useful to the Minister and others interested in this amendment to look at some of those. The first organisation to do this in depth was Watford Council, which led to the Liberals taking over—so I was not too popular.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Baroness is encouraging me to look at these pilots. However, I seem to recall that voting took place on a number of days. In Scotland, local elections were for many years on a Tuesday. For some reason, they all seem to have coalesced round a Thursday. Picking up the point of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, I recall that in 1978 the Hamilton parliamentary by-election took place on Wednesday because Scotland’s first match in the 1978 World Cup finals was being played on the Thursday. I am not sure what it did for the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, but it did not do much for the Scottish football team.

There is a consensus on the need to find ways in which we can increase the turnout, which undoubtedly ensures that those elected to the other place have a stronger democratic mandate.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred to the briefing of the Electoral Commission, which echoed what the Electoral Commission said in the consultation undertaken by the previous Government. The Electoral Commission stated that it was,

“not opposed to weekend voting in principle, but that no change should be considered without clear evidence that it would be of significant benefit to the voter”.

That view was shared by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which in its response to that consultation said,

“The Committee is not opposed in principle to moving the day of elections from Thursday to the weekend. But we have seen no evidence that such a move would bring any clear benefits … It is not obvious that [people] would find it easier to vote at the weekend”.

One might say in the Scottish context that this is a not proven verdict, but that does not mean to say that there should not be trials. With regard to advance voting, which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned, that was referred to in the consultation paper on The Governance of Britain published by the previous Government. It pointed out in that consultation that, as part of the previous Government’s programme for piloting innovative voting methods, 20 local authorities had piloted advanced voting in polling stations since the year 2000. Evidence from these pilots, however, indicated that the availability of advanced voting had done little to increase turnout.

There are a number of issues and I recognise that this is inevitably an issue to which your Lordships’ House will wish to return. I hope this is not honeyed in any way and I am not standing at the Dispatch Box to say that the Government are about to launch an initiative with regard to weekend voting. However, picking up the point made by my noble friend Lord Newton, I want to make clear that we are not ruling it out. I want to reassure the House that not including something in this Bill will not rule out the possibility of us returning to this issue.

I do not believe—this is an important point—that this is the appropriate legislative vehicle to make the change. In this Bill, we have tried to do only that which is strictly necessary to establish fixed-term Parliaments and, as far as possible, reflect existing practice. It has become common practice to hold the elections on the first Thursday in May. Three of the last four were held on that day, the exception being in 2001 when the need to move it was widely agreed due to the outbreak of foot and mouth.

The noble Baroness, Lady Golding, also indicated that one of the issues that had to be looked at is that, if we are moving the date of parliamentary elections to the other place, should we also look at the local elections and, for that matter, the elections to the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies.

It is not a criticism of the drafting because I think the point of these amendments was to raise an important issue, but there are a number of consequential issues which would flow in terms of any change that was to be made. In the light of that, I want to reassure my noble friend that if this Bill goes through without amendments, that will not be used at a future date as evidence of Parliament agreeing that it will be that day. That was the assurance he was looking for. It will not be thrown back at him like that. I hope that in those circumstances, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of Straight Statistics, a group working against statistical abuse by the media, companies, advertisers and the Government. The Minister, in an earlier debate, used in justification for the cut in the number of Members of Parliament by 50 an alleged saving of £12.5 million—he will correct me if I have this figure wrong, as my hearing is not as good as it was. He is nodding in approval, but I cannot approve of that statistic.

If you take the average cost of each MP and multiply it by 50, you get to the figure of £12.5 million or thereabouts. However, that is of course an entirely phoney way to do it. There will be more constituency cases and more people for each MP to write letters to. The workload will not change. The only thing that you save by having 50 fewer MPs is the MPs’ salaries, with a total saving of about £3 million. Perhaps the difference between £12.5 million and £3 million is regarded as insignificant—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I wonder if my noble friend would take that a little further. If the Government want to save £12.5 million, they have to make sure that costs elsewhere do not rise. The level of work needed to be done by the Electoral Commission will involve the employment of more staff—a recurrent expense year on year. I do not think that the Government have thought about that. If they are going to tell us what this measure is going to save—and the only argument that I have heard from the Government is that this will save money—I think that we have the right to know precisely what it will cost in other areas, so that we can see the real costs.

[Lord Lipsey]

My noble friend is right. There are bags of extra costs in this Bill, including £80 million well spent on the AV referendum—well spent, that is, if it gets the result that both the noble Baroness and I would like to see. I am, however, confining myself to the saving on MPs, because that is the one argument that the Minister has made this afternoon. My point is that he has used a totally bogus figure—inadvertently, I am sure. If he wants to dispute this later, he can put a letter in the Library and we can no doubt correspond about it. It is extremely worrying if a Minister has inadvertently misled—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as a former government Chief Whip, espouses the free vote. On the whole I agree with him, but not all the time; in fact, probably not most of the time and probably not on this Bill. The noble Lord said that I should demonstrate publicly why we are doing these things and I shall try to do that. Noble Lords opposite came forward with what I thought were entirely rational arguments. However, I will try to demonstrate that, however rational they were, they start from a false premise. I will not say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, that his amendment is defective. I do not know whether it is or not. It is of no interest to me whether it is defective or not. I know what he was trying to achieve and I accept that he had limited time to get it right, and so I think it is unnecessary to say that. I greatly admire the quality of the research done by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. He went all the way back to 2003 and found a quotation from the Prime Minister himself, saying something that he would no doubt now regret. That shows just how far he has come over the past few years.

A number of amendments have been tabled to change the number of constituencies required by the Bill to more than 600. We discussed this issue at length on the ninth day of Committee, and I can understand why. I shall set out the Government’s thinking for today’s debate and explain why we are clear that there is a case for making what we consider to be a modest reduction in the size of the House. First, our proposal simply aims to end the upward pressure on the number of MPs and to make a modest reduction in the overall number. With the exception of the review after the creation of the Scottish Parliament, which took effect in 2005, all other boundary reviews since 1950 have seen an increase of between four and 15 seats. The fourth and fifth reviews of the Boundary Commission for England noted that the rules are currently drafted in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, which contributed to this problem. The fifth general review laid out the details of the issue and noted:

“We illustrate, in paragraph 2.11, how the consequence of the interplay of the existing Rules, other than Rule 1, is a tendency for an ever increasing allocation of constituencies in England in future reviews. This could be changed if the Rules were altered”.

The Boundary Commissions have no formal role in advising on the rules that they must apply. However, as the bodies which have extensive experience of the practical result of applying these rules, their views are clearly important. The changes proposed in this Bill will address those concerns, a point underlined by the British Academy which notes that the revised rules were a very substantial improvement on those currently implemented by the Boundary Commissions, have a clear hierarchy and are not contradictory.

Secondly, making a modest reduction in the overall number of MPs will allow a saving to the public purse. We feel that it is right to lead by example at a time when the whole of the public sector is being asked to make savings. We estimate that reducing the size of the other place will save £12.2 million annually, made up of a reduced salary cost of £4.1 million and £8.1 million in reduced expenditure on MPs’ expenses. I shall turn in a moment to the increased workload raised by many noble Lords. The fundamental point here is that at a time when the whole public sector is being asked to do more with less, this is a relatively modest saving but one which we think is worth making. There is no reason why MPs and the House of Commons should not be more efficient. These amendments would wipe out any prospect of reducing the cost of politics, while we believe that we should lead by example.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

Will the noble Lord tell us what the Government’s estimate is of the increased costs in the Electoral Commission?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group: Amendments 27AA, 27BA and 27BB. These are technical amendments and I do not think that they have any political implications at all. Certainly I do not think that they do anything to challenge what the Government regard as the principles of this Bill. I am rather puzzled that in the definitions of local government boundaries on page 12 in Clause 10(3)(a), reference is made to the boundaries of each county, each district and each London borough, but no reference is made to the boundaries of other unitary authorities. If the noble Lord is able to tell me that other unitary authorities are covered by these definitions as already stated in the Bill, I have no problem; but I do not think that they are. There are unitary authorities that are not counties or London boroughs. Surely it would be desirable in principle if the Boundary Commissions, in applying rule 5(1)(b) on page 10, were to seek to avoid crossing the boundaries of other unitary authorities when drawing up the boundaries of constituencies. Professor Ron Johnston made that point in his evidence to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform of another place. He suggested that it was no more than an oversight that other unitary authorities had not been included within the clarification of terms in the Bill.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My noble friend might like to know that a couple of years ago Durham County became a new unitary authority and is no longer counted as either a county or as being in any of the other categories. There is, none the less, a real pride in being the new unitary authority within the old county of Durham. It would be very weird if we had to stray from wards within that area into Tyneside, Wearside or, indeed, into Cumbria, at the top of the county, and Northumberland. It seems to me that my noble friend has hit on something important—certainly in Durham we would take it as very important indeed.

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[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

We are God's own country.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Technically, perhaps the county of Durham is no longer a county council as such; I do not know. It seems to me all the more important that there should be recognition in the Bill of the important contemporary reality of unitary authorities.

Among his observations in debate on a previous amendment, the noble Lord noted that parliamentary constituency boundaries crossed the boundaries of a significant proportion of unitary authorities. That is not a good reason to surrender those unitary authorities, assuming that there will be no concern among the people who live within them that their integrity should be preserved when drawing parliamentary constituency boundaries—and, very importantly, the working relationship between Members of Parliament and the local authorities governing the areas, the communities, which they represent. It must be desirable that Members of Parliament deal with the smallest possible number of local authorities. The complexity, the multiplication of tasks, the time-wasting and the cost involved in Members of Parliament having to deal with a proliferation of different local authorities overlapping with their constituencies is clearly undesirable. I hope that the Government will accept that the Bill should be amended on the lines of my amendments.

I say just a word on the question of wards as building blocks. If it has to be accepted that, with the tight tolerance around the electoral quota, it will be more commonly the case than it has been hitherto that individual wards will be bisected in the drawing up of constituencies, some administrative questions follow. What is to be the subdivision of wards that the Boundary Commission will need to take account of? If it is to be polling districts, how can we be sure that local authorities will not redefine polling districts so as to frustrate the purposes of the Boundary Commission?

Those administrative processes ought to be sensibly related to each other. If we are to see the fragmentation of wards, we need some sub-unit which the Boundary Commission will respect. If it is to be the polling district within the ward—which it could be—we need a guarantee that the polling districts will not be arbitrarily chopped and changed. I beg to move.