Northern Ireland: Customs
Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Viscount Younger of Leckie
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I am not quite clear what this so-called clear breach is. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster reiterated last week that we have always said that there will need to be light-touch checks, particularly, as I said earlier, for live animals and agri-foods coming from the internal market in the UK across to Northern Ireland.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that he could not see any circumstances in which there would be a need for checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to GB. Under the withdrawal agreement, Northern Ireland will continue to follow EU rules on food and manufactured goods. The rest of the UK will not but will continue to follow EU customs rules, leading to checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain. The prospect by December of no deal will have implications for the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol and the scale of checks required on the Irish Sea interface. Will the Minister now press the Government to urgently request an extension before the end of June?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I should make it clear to the noble Baroness that the Government have no intention of extending the transition period. Discussions are progressing well, and they are very constructive. The joint committee and the special committees are working to take forward the detail, which is so important for the protocol.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Viscount Younger of Leckie
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I rise with some trepidation to speak against government Amendment 78P. I heard what the Minister said about hoping that there would be no insolvencies, but the Government appear to be expecting a number of registered providers to become insolvent during this Parliament and for the marketplace to have fewer larger housing providers. That will mean that some of the smaller ones will go to the wall.
On Amendment 78P, the land over which there is a current planning permission belonging to a registered provider that has now become insolvent would be sold on. Presumably, that would be to a developer for it to carry out the extant planning permission. However, the Section 106 planning obligations that the local authority in good faith had attached to the granting of the application, in order to serve both the existing communities around the site and the residents who would move into the proposed dwellings once the site been completed, would be waived. I fear that this is gerrymandering on a large scale and does not serve the communities within the local authority concerned at all well.
Of course, removing the planning obligations means that either the developer gets a bargain or that the housing administrator is able to get a higher price for the land. Either way, the local communities will suffer as no leisure or community facilities will be provided which were the subject of the original planning application. I fear that this is penny-pinching and shabby in the extreme.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I hope that I can provide some reassurance arising from a couple of questions on this short debate, particularly for the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I will try to encapsulate both questions in the same way because the best way that we can protect social homes is by making sure that the sector is financially strong. That is the basis of what we are aiming to do. To do that, as I said earlier, we need lenders to have confidence in the sector. We have therefore made it clear that, if absolutely necessary, social housing stock can be sold out of the sector by an administrator. This has only ever happened once and is just a matter of last resort. Therefore, the objective to service creditors takes precedence over the objective to keep social homes in the regulated sector.
The amendment responds to creditors’ concern that the original drafting risks affecting loan security valuations, potentially increasing the cost of debts. This is technical rather than anything more broadly based. The key point is that we need to maintain lender confidence in the sector. I hope that that gives reassurance.