Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

This statement and the ability to intervene through an Electoral Commission will undermine our democracy; certain people have shown that you can do so very effectively. Our whole democracy is at risk if people do not come forth and be honest with the nation, because other people will go down the same route in the run-up to the next election.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to briefly follow the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and that extremely powerful and important speech. It is important in this debate that the House hears from the insurgent voice, the non-establishment voice, the voice of change, which the Green Party represents. However, I should declare an interest because much of the debate on this statement has been about the place of money in our politics, and the Green Party basically does not have any in comparison to the people we have just been hearing about. We operate on the enthusiasm and the energy of our members, the power of our arguments, the strength of our debate; that is what should determine our politics and be the foundation of democracy. Overseeing that should be the independent Electoral Commission. We have heard again and again that, if we were judging any other country, an independent electoral commission would be the absolute basis of judgment. We should come back to our own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s statement, in its usual modest terms:

“The House may wish to press the Minister for a compelling justification for the Government’s approach”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made a valiant effort to put the case and said that the Electoral Commission was not a perfect institution. I do not think anyone here would claim that there was such a thing as a perfect institution. However, I invite your Lordships’ House to consider the classic scales of justice and weigh up a judgment of the independent Electoral Commission versus the Government, with all their vested interests, and say which way should those scales be weighed in the interests of justice and the interests of democracy.

Teesworks Joint Venture

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, there are many areas of concern that are yet to be covered by any investigation. Indeed, the report notes that many issues raised by third parties were outside the scope of its review, such as those raised regarding wildlife die-off and health and safety. There were, of course, many grave concerns and a tragedy of two men dying on the site. There were subsequent accidents where an excavator fell into the river with the driver inside, and dangerous exposure to benzine. There must be concern about whether the remediation of the site has been carried out properly. What further plans do the Government have to look into all those other issues raised locally, which remain concerns and which the report has not covered?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not believe that there are any further plans to cover any further reviews.

Long-term Plan for Housing

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not think that the delivery of more affordable housing and the delivery of more beautiful housing need to be in tension with each other. In fact, the right housing in the right place allows more support for development to go ahead, which is one of the big barriers we see to delivering more housing in local areas, and affordable housing should be beautiful housing too. Noble Lords have had a lot of debates in this House about the standards within our homes, particularly within our social housing. We should be no less ambitious for the standards that people enjoy in their housing, whether it is social housing, affordable housing or private housing. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked about space for children to play, for example. Taking into account that kind of amenity is important for the right development to go ahead. We should recognise that we have made significant progress in recent years in building more houses. We have had some of the highest housing delivery in the past four years that we have had in the past 20 years, and we seek to continue that, but without those measures necessarily needing to be in tension. The noble Lord spoke about Ministers talking to each other in different departments. I reassure him that, particularly on these areas that cut across different interests and on something like net zero or environmental impact, we bring together the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, my department and Defra to work together to provide solutions on these issues.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall follow the theme of social housing. I declare my position as a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC. Responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the Minister said that the Government are committed to social housing. We have just heard that again, and it is great, but the Minister may be aware of a document from the National Housing Federation, Let’s Fix the Housing Crisis: Delivering a Long-Term Plan for Housing. This crosses over with her former departmental responsibilities. It asserts:

“The wider fiscal, societal and economic benefits of social housing are poorly captured in current cost benefit analysis”,


and, particularly, in the Government’s Green Book. The NHF stresses that we need housing

“in the right location, with the right support for those who need it”,

which sounds very much like the Green Party’s Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price. Does the Minister agree that planning needs to think about this social element as well as the purely spatial element? We have been relying on the market for decades now. It has not worked out very well and has given the crisis we have now, plus the terrible privatisation of right to buy. I will pick up a point from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp: one of the things that the NHF report highlights is the increase in the long-term cost of housing benefit as a result of the increase in the number of retired people who are in private rental housing now. Do we not have to join up far more planning and financial considerations and pure human considerations to secure an affordable place for everybody to live?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, a number of the changes that we are making to the NPPF address some of the noble Baroness’s concerns. They are all about allowing a local area, using the evidence of local need, to produce a plan that works for that area. The noble Baroness touched on the Green Book and how we value social housing but also wider social benefits when we look at value for money in government projects. The Government have done work on reforming the Green Book over a number of years to ensure that we better take that into account. There is also better assessment of national well-being as a factor when we look at policies. We are looking, for example, at valuing our green space more clearly in our policy assessments, so that we can take a more well-rounded look. That is at the heart of my department’s mission. When looking at levelling up across the whole of the United Kingdom, one point that often gets made is that the old ways of doing things incentivises you to invest only in London and the south-east. While that is incredibly important, we know that investing in communities across our country is how we will actually deliver for people, and that is what my department has been created to do.

Levelling Up

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right that there was funding under previous rounds. However, it is right that the UK Government take a cohesive look at where investment is needed and, given the budgetary position faced by the Northern Ireland Executive and the absence of devolved institutions, we need to look at that very carefully. That relates to his question because the longer we have an absence of any Executive in place, the more keenly we feel some of those pressures and the need to be able to take those decisions in the round. As I have said, this funding remains there for Northern Ireland; it has not been reallocated elsewhere. We are extremely keen to work with the Executive as soon as possible when they return, so that we can address all the challenges that face public services in Northern Ireland.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my positions as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the National Association of Local Councils. The Minister has used the phrase “committed to simplifying” a number of times. Would the simplest thing not be for Westminster to get out of the road and simply agree a funding formula to the areas of the country most in need of what has been identified as levelling up—areas with the lowest healthy life expectancy or the worst levels of child poverty? Should it not allocate a multiyear long-term funding stream to those areas to allow them to decide what projects they want to spend money on to improve the life of their communities? Is it not wildly inefficient, not to mention rather curious in light of the number of Tory-held constituencies that end up with funding—perhaps currently Tory-held is a better term—not to have a fair and transparent system, perhaps even one that could be agreed across all political parties, so that people could be confident that this would go on for the long term and local communities could make decisions for themselves and invest consistently?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I absolutely reject the noble Baroness’s assertion that this funding has been allocated in an unfair or untransparent manner. Alongside the projects that have received funding, we have published a clear methodology note about how we have approached the allocations. Although I may have heard worries about the pace of delivery and the amount of money available, I think that overall both Front Benches opposite welcomed the announcement that we made on Monday. On the overall approach to local government finance, we have a system at the moment that recognises needs. It means that those councils with the most deprived households within them get 17% higher funding per dwelling than those with the fewest. I recognise the calls for wider reform to local government funding but noble Lords will know that, in the wake of Covid and other uncertainties, this Government made a commitment that while we should press ahead with that, it would not be for now but for the next Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, since we have time, and since the Minister is getting to grips with her new portfolio, I will raise a somewhat conceptual point. Has the Minister considered that levelling up also means that there is a counteracting force, namely the concentration of power, resources and development in London and the south-east, which they are struggling to cope with? In Cambridge, for example, a proposed development of 1,000 homes was recently turned down because there was not enough water supply for those homes. Does the Minister see that continuing overdevelopment—the pushing of money and resources into London and the south-east—is a countervailing force to attempts to level up?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not think that that is the way in which I will be approaching my new department and role. I think we can both continue to invest in London and the south-east as great places to live and work and an important part of our economy and also invest in levelling up across the rest of the country. I acknowledge, however, that when you have denser populations and more competition over resources, it adds pressure. Those are different forms of problems that big cities, with high development needs, might need to address versus rural areas, as was highlighted by the right reverend Prelate. We need the right approach for the right area, which is part of what devolving power allows us to do.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests set out in the register. It was a delight to listen to my noble friends Lord Goldsmith and Lord Randall describe the importance of swift bricks to the preservation of this species and to stopping their decline. I am delighted to be able to support it.

Installing these bricks is an absolute no-brainer. They cost between £25 and £35. Last year, the big four housebuilders—just four of them, Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon and Bellway—made profits of £2.749 billion. I am sure they can afford a £25 brick for the 300,000 homes they might or might not manage to build next year. Installing the bricks is a no-brainer.

I learned today—I hope, wrongly—that the Government may be opposed to this measure. That, too, would be a no-brainer if they are. I wonder where the opposition has come from. I hope they have not been lobbied by the Home Builders Federation—the organisation which lied, lied and lied again about the Government blocking the building of 145,000 homes because of nutrient neutrality. That was totally untrue. Of course, housebuilders are sitting on more than 1 million planning applications and are land-banking until they can release them gradually and make maximum profits. If that is legitimate, so be it, but let us not let them attack the Government for holding up housebuilding when it is not the Government doing it.

I understand that in the Commons the Government said they could not mandate this nationally and it must be left to local voluntary discretion. Housebuilding left to local voluntary discretion? You cannot build a house anywhere in the country without the Government almost dictating the colour of the curtains. Look at the national regulations on every aspect of housebuilding: electrics; plumbing; the type of cement; the way the damp-proof course is laid; the tiles and insulation. Nearly every mortal thing of importance in the house—the width of the doorways, the bannisters, the boilers you may install after 2030—is dictated by central government, and rightly so. I am not complaining about that, but I am complaining about the apparent hypocrisy if the Government I support are now saying “Oh, we can’t order every house to have a little brick installed because that is taking national government interference too far”. If that is the case, I think that is nonsense.

I know that some Government Ministers have already installed these bricks. They have done it voluntarily, without guidance. If it is good enough for some Ministers, quite rightly, to save swifts out of their own volition, then it should be quite right that the Government support a measure to impose this nationally.

If it is the case that the Government are opposed to this, I would really like to know where that opposition came from in government. If it is true then some idiot—an adviser, spad or civil servant, but hopefully not a Minister—has decided to oppose this. I exempt my noble friend the Minister, as this is an environmental matter and nothing to do with her brief, but why in the name of God should a Conservative Government oppose this?

In the first three years of this Government, under Michael Gove and George Eustice in environment, we made the biggest strides forward in environmental and nature protection that this country has ever seen, with the 25-year plan and the Environment Act. Now we could lose that good reputation because of a trivial thing if we oppose installing a 25-quid brick in a house wall to save swifts.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 221A on swift bricks, as your Lordships might expect. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, flown back from a nearby cavity just to be here for this debate, but she could not be here at the start, so your Lordships get me instead.

This is something that I have been talking about. I was on TalkTV, talking to Julia Hartley-Brewer about restoring biodiversity. I happened to mention swift bricks in that discussion and the presenter said in response, “Isn’t that just a small thing? Don’t we have to do much more?”. Of course that is true, but, if you are a swift then a swift brick is not a small thing. The fact that you need somewhere to make your home and raise your young is a matter of life and death. As the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, there has been a 60% decline in the population in the last 25 years. These beautiful and utterly amazing creations of nature depend on having a place to rest and raise their young, and we are closing those spaces off.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, also made an important point about human well-being—how much we all benefit from having swifts around and what a wonderful addition they are to our environment. Think about young people, such as the toddler who says, “What’s that?”, and has it explained so that they learn more. That is crucial.

The state of our biodiversity is absolutely parlous. We are one of the worst corners of this planet for nature. As we heard passionately from the Benches opposite, surely the Government cannot oppose this—they cannot oppose what was said by MPs in the other place and is being said by so many petitioners. Please let us have some common sense here.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to support Amendment 221A. Swifts, by their nature, nest in holes in trees but took advantage of the advent of human buildings to transfer their allegiance in our direction. Now in our towns, any tree with a hole in it is immediately felled as a danger to people and we are blocking up the places where swifts used to nest in buildings. We need to do something about that—it is absolutely our obligation.

We also have to deal with the quantity of insects, so bringing 30 by 30 into towns is really important too, but swift bricks seem to me an absolutely symbolic act. We would be saying that we will start to make room for nature around us and in our habitations. It would involve people, as Dasgupta wished, in direct contact with nature, rather than nature being somewhere else where they do not have to go if they do not want to. That makes this a really important symbolic advance.

I like the amendment: it is just that you put in a swift brick. There are no downsides, no penalties and no rules. You could fill it with cement a year later and no one is going to prosecute you. I have got scaffolding on my house at the moment, so we are putting up some swift boxes because it is not suitable for swift bricks. The best supplier I found said, “If you’re buying a swift box, why don’t you put a bat box on the back?”. I looked up the regulations as to what would happen if a bat actually occupied that box, and it is ridiculous. It would be tens of thousands of pounds off the value of the house, and all the regulations mean that you cannot do anything without bringing in a bat person if you have bats in a bat box. I could not paint it or shift it; I could not paint around it; I could not make noise next to it. The contrast between bat regulation and this proposal on swifts is stark. I am not putting in a bat box—I am not bats—but I am putting in swift boxes.

Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think you explain to people that we are building houses that people will need in the areas that that particular group works in, and that we do not accept that this constitutes a regression in environmental outcomes. The packages of environmental measures, backed by significant additional investment, will more than offset the very small amount of additional nutrient discharge attributable to those 100,000 houses. They should carry on the great work that they are doing. We should be building out those houses and at the same time investing in making sure that we are dealing with the environmental outcomes at source.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I was speaking today with businesses which have been working with farmers and land managers to develop mitigation schemes that could be used by housing developers. They were, I think it would be fair to say, in a state of shock. The rug has literally been pulled out from underneath their business plans. They said that there are other ways in which the Government might have approached this. People have been working on the idea of a levy as an alternative and on the idea of changing the planning system so that housing developers could later in the process bring in mitigation schemes. What we have seen is a sudden nuclear option from the Government to just throw away what has been there without any kind of replacement. Can the Minister tell me whether the Government have considered these other proposals of a levy or of changing the way in which mitigation schemes come in, or have they just gone ahead with this single stroke without any consideration or consultation?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said to the noble Baroness opposite, this is why it has taken time. It has taken time to look at all the options. As far as farmers are concerned, the package that we are offering includes £200 million for slurry infrastructure grants, which are really important to farmers, and £25 million for nutrient management innovation. There is a lot of innovation going on, but farmers need support to be able to deliver it. I think farmers may not have seen all the information that is here, but I am sure that when they do, they will support it wholeheartedly. We know that agricultural outputs put a significant amount of nutrients into water—far more than small housing developments do—and we want to help farmers to deal with that.

I want to give an example of what has been stopped by this: a proposal for a change of use around a house in multiple occupancy in the Solent to include one additional resident was dismissed on appeal due to the additional nutrient pollution. That cannot be right. Another example, which was reported in the Times, is that of a retired couple who have struggled for seven years to convert barns on their Herefordshire property into four homes, including one for their son. The scheme received outline planning permission in 2016, but nutrient neutrality rules have left them unable to build to this day. We want those houses, but we also want to protect the environment, and that is what we are doing with these amendments.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord said about the need for climate change to be in the Bill. I will speak to my Amendment 246A in this group. It is on the topical issue of wildfires, which have been exacerbated by climate change. As all your Lordships will know, wildfires have caused an enormous amount of death and disruption, with huge social, economic and environmental impact, across the world this year. You only have to see the regular news about what is happening in Greece and Canada to know what a problem it is. This year, we in the UK have been fortunate that we have not had fires on quite that scale—although we have had fires.

This debate slightly follows on from Committee, since when I have been in correspondence with the Home Office. We have a Minister for Fire there, but, in his reply—I think it was to me; it was addressed wrongly but it landed at my address, so I guess it was—he immediately referred me to Defra. So we have at least two departments in government involved, and although there is a Minister he is not in the department of most interest: Defra. That is why I have tabled Amendment 246A. Subsection (1) of its proposed new clause would require the Secretary of State, together with the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to produce

“a national wildfire strategy and action plan”

within six months of the passing of the Bill. It is ludicrous that, in a country that has suffered, and continues to suffer, the wildfires that we have, we do not have an overall action plan.

Action plans are all very well and good, but they have to be implemented at local level. Therefore, in proposed new subsection (3) I suggest that each local planning authority produces a wildfire risk assessment plan in conjunction with the fire and rescue services. This is a local matter in the end, and it is vital that the local authority and local people are involved, as we have heard in two recent amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, waxed lyrical about it. My noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Lansley also mentioned how important it was to have up-to-date plans that were approved by local people.

In proposed new subsection (4), I list some of the things that need to be included in the proposed strategy and action plan. One of the issues is

“a map identifying the areas of current risk produced in accordance with the Met Office Fire Severity Index”.

At this stage, I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench—I think my noble friend Lord Howe is going to answer this—whether he considers this to be a valid index.

The current index, known as the MOFSI, helps us to plan for and react to fires but, unlike a fire danger rating system, MOFSI gives an indication of fire severity based only on the meteorological data and does not fully account for the varied fuel types that we see across the UK. Although MOFSI can indicate whether conditions are worsening or improving, its primary role is to determine whether open-access land should be closed to prevent the spread of fire. However, MOFSI does not always work effectively. For example, during the dry summer of 2018, in some regions the indices did not rise sufficiently to trigger land closures in areas that went on to experience severe wildfires. That proves to me that we need a different system of assessment and a fire danger rating system. Does my noble friend agree with me on that?

I do not want to pursue the arguments I used in Committee. I want to look at this issue briefly from another point of view—the insurance point of view. I do not know whether the Government have given any thought to insurance. We have had huge insurance problems with floods. There is a lesson to be learned from that, which is that we must act in advance when it comes to fires.

As I said, we have not had a repeat of the fires of last year, but on 18 and 19 July last year there were 84 wildfires affecting 28 of the 46 response areas, and it overwhelmed the fire and rescue services to such an extent that there was very little spare capacity for other emergencies. If that was not a warning to us that we need to improve the situation, I do not know what other action the Government need to be presented with.

That brings us to the question of insurance. The insurance industry is beginning to look at this in a serious way. As we continue to build, the urban/rural fringe is going to be hugely important. This will be the critical area of damage to the most property. There will be, and has been, damage to properties in rural areas, but the urban area is now most at risk. The expert report on wildfire in the UK for the third climate change risk assessment advised that wildfire and sources of ignition from outside of buildings should be considered in future planning actions and in building regulations and mitigation measures put into action. That is a relevant issue. Marsh McLennan, one of the experts on this, has quantified the benefit of fire buffer zones for the rural/urban interface. In the report it produced, it stated that wildfire

“risks can be greatly mitigated and reduced to a level that is both livable and insurable”.

It would be sad if the Government put us in a predicament in which people could not get insurance.

I have stressed the urban/rural fringe for one particular reason. Part of Defra’s agricultural policy is rewilding land, which leads to more abandonment, trees closer to rural areas and a much higher fuel load. It is the fuel load that is absolutely critical. We are blessed in this country with a wide diversity of geological stratas of soil, reflecting the countryside. Because of our maritime climate, we have very high fuel loads at certain times of the year and in certain places. The concern is that these are not assessed at the moment.

If we want to consider whether the fuel load matters, we can take a brief look back at the Saddleworth Moor fire, which was on peat and on very long, unmanaged and unkempt heather. When it burned, it produced something like 36,720 tonnes of carbon. In real figures, that equates to the annual emissions of 86,000 passenger cars—and that was one fire alone. The key in all this is the fuel load and how it is best managed. To do that, it is important that the local planning authorities have the appropriate plans underneath an overriding national fire strategy for England and Wales. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all the amendments in this group, but in the interests of time I will restrict myself to commenting on just two of them. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. Due to my Australian origins, I feel I am constitutionally obliged to make a contribution on wildfires, which for most of my youth I would have called bush-fires. In the British context, from 2009 to 2021 there were 362,000 wildfires, with nearly 80,000 hectares burned. The estimate is that, if we were to go to 2 degrees of global warming—something that we cannot afford—the number of very high fire risk days would double. That is because there is less rain in summer and it gets hotter and drier. As the noble Earl just said, if you have a wet winter and a spring that has a great flush of growth, that presents one set of risks—and, of course, peatlands, in which it is extremely difficult to extinguish fires, are another area of serious risk.

When people assess the risk in the UK, we think about those rural areas—those uplands and peatlands—but there is very serious risk, particularly in the south of England. I point noble Lords to the desperate and horrendous events in Hawaii. Noble Lords may have seen the photo of the now famous red-roofed house, which was one house that was not burned in the midst of blocks and blocks of houses. The two key things with that house were that it had a tin roof, rather than the asphalt roofs that most of the houses had, and they had cut back the vegetation. That is a demonstration of how preparation is so crucial in planning and guiding the thinking of people in the UK, who are really not very used to thinking about fires, to prepare for the risks ahead.

I point to a not terribly recent example but one that demonstrates the dangers, as Hawaii did, to urban areas—the peri-urban fringe but extending quite a way into urban areas. The Swinley Forest fire in Berkshire in 2011 burnt 300 hectares and 300 firefighters had to work to stop it getting into Bracknell, population 110,000. So, this is a modest but really important amendment that really is for the age of shocks, the age of the climate emergency we now live in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have an illustration—as ever, from Eastbourne—of what is going on with solar panels. We have in the middle of town about 400 hectares of grazing marshes. There is a proposal to build a solar farm on a chunk of that, right next to 100 hectares of industrial estate. None of the firms have solar panels and nor do their car parks. There is clearly a local demand for solar electricity and the grid connection needed for it, but nothing is happening to provide solar panels on the existing space, which could so easily be used for them.

The Government’s policy is pointing in the right direction, but it is inadequate. It needs reinforcing. They need to give a much harder shove to putting solar panels on existing commercial buildings and commercial space. I very much hope that, if the exact wording of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, cannot be accepted, the Government will commit to bringing something back at a later stage or finding another way of doing something about it, because where they are at the moment will not do.

Exactly the same applies to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which I have great sympathy for. Therefore, I do not see the virtue in Amendment 191B, the wording of which seems very strange. I do not think that “should” bears the meaning that my noble friend tried to put on it; it is an imperative in legislation. Statements such as

“all new homes should be secure and built in such a way as to minimise the risk of crime”

mean that we would need to have eight-inch thick concrete blocks with tiny portholes for windows, because these are absolute words and not the much more open and discursive words employed in Amendment 198, which I therefore favour.

I also like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. We need to look seriously at embodied carbon. If that involves new construction methods, we need to learn from the lesson of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. It was the miracle of its time, but that wonderful new method of doing things has not worked out. If we are going to introduce new methods and new structures extensively in housing and other buildings, we really must go back to not only testing them to destruction but monitoring how they are working in the environment. We used to do that with new building methods; we need to get back to it now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to offer the strongest possible Green support for all these amendments, which really fit into the intersection of Green policies on public health, climate and poverty eradication. I will make just three brief points.

First, on solar panels on a suitable new homes and buildings, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for pursuing this for so long. If I look on Twitter, the question I am asked most often is, “Why do new homes not have solar panels?” It seems such a no-brainer to the public, and they cannot understand why. Of course, the answer to that goes back to 2013 when David Cameron had gone from “hug a husky” to referring to “green crap”. The plan to bring in this effective regulation was abandoned a decade ago. This means that more than 2 million British households are now paying vastly more for their energy than they need to be paying, while also emitting more carbon than they need to be emitting.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have been extremely powerful on the parlous state of public health and the relationship that has to housing. It is interesting that if we go back to the start of the NHS in 1948, Aneurin Bevan was Minister for both the NHS and housing. Those two things were seen as intimately interrelated. Somehow or other, we seem to have lost the plot with this. To quote some figures from the Building Research Establishment, it is estimated that poor housing costs the NHS £1.4 billion a year—money that could be saved.

Thirdly and finally, I acknowledge the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about his awakening to the issue of embodied carbon. This is something that has been largely ignored. There has been the shallow approach of “That’s a terrible building. We’ll knock it down and build something better”. I have just come from a conference in Zagreb—an international conference with a lot of European speakers. I was hearing of so many amazing projects that are happening across Europe and looking at how we can build in innovative new ways while using existing materials.

I shall quote just one example of this. If a building needs to be knocked down, how can we reuse those materials, rather than just throwing them away? In Copenhagen, there is something called Resource Rows: housing has been built largely with slabs of bricks cut from existing buildings that had to be demolished. Those slabs are cut out and put into the walls of the new buildings. They have recycled materials. The timber is coming from where they have put a new Metro extension in. The timber frames that went around the concrete pieces for the Metro then go into building housing right beside it. They have greenhouses for growing vegetables on site, made from old windows. This is the kind of innovation that is happening elsewhere because they have the regulations that demand it. We are lacking those regulations; we are lacking this guidance from the Government. Just look at what we are building now.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I refer noble Lords to my interests as laid out in the register and as a director of Peers for the Planet. In the interests of time, I will address just two amendments in this group, but that is not to detract from my strong support for the remaining amendments.

First, Amendment 282H, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which has support from across your Lordships’ House and to which I have added my name, simply calls for the Government to require all new domestic, public and commercial buildings to be fitted with solar PV and will include existing public and commercial buildings, subject to appropriate exemptions and criteria. Frankly, I do not understand the Government’s opposition to this very sensible measure. I spent four consecutive years on the planning committee while I was a councillor for Kew ward in the London Borough of Richmond. My experience there taught me absolutely to recognise that progress on this issue will be vastly expedited if the decision is not left to construction companies whose sole concern, at least for the majority, is profit.

The Government’s argument is that it is happening anyway. That fails to demonstrate that they take the need for urgent action on climate change seriously. Anyway, where is the evidence that it is happening already at effective rate? Is the figure for new-build solar PV 10%, 5% or 50%? What is the Government’s policy on this? Can the Minister tell me? Who keeps account of these figures? Surely the Government’s policy must be 100% solar PV on all new buildings and, if not, why not?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville—it is late. Planning at all levels generally requires mineral extraction. In Somerset, many quarries provide both aggregates and stone of various types for housing construction, and we will need more of it. Some of this comes from the Mendip Hills, some from the blue lias quarries at Hadspen and a smaller proportion from the Ham stone quarries. Not to have the authority whose responsibility it is to license the extraction from these quarries involved in the preparation of the joint spatial development strategy is, my noble friend would say, foolish in the extreme. It could lead to divisions among not only the authorities themselves but the residents they represent, because such an operation involves lorry movement, hours of operation and community facilities to compensate local communities for disruption. We could all provide loads of examples of where such collaboration is vital.

Casting a glance at the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, I say that I was probably the only leader in the east of England—there were possibly two of us—who did not celebrate the scrapping of regional strategies. They were abandoned just as I had begun to learn the value of them and how they would enhance everywhere.

We fully support the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in his efforts to get this amendment to the Bill and hope that he will be successful, for the sake of all local authorities, which have a legitimate role and a right to be involved. On the other, negative, side of the coin, it could impact adversely if they are not. If the amendment cannot be accepted, perhaps the Minister can explain why not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly, having attached my name to Amendment 192 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. The case has comprehensively been made by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, so I shall be extremely brief. I note that representations from the County Councils Network over the recess led me to attach my name to this amendment, because I thought that it too comprehensively made the case. At this point, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the NALC.

I wanted to make a link to some of our earlier debates before the dinner break. In the last group, we were focusing on the need to tackle the problems of unhealthy communities and making communities healthier, and the mood all around your Lordships’ House was very clear, including from Government Benches and even the Front Bench. Of course, health is a county council responsibility. We talked about part of that being walking and cycling networks, for example, and about things being joined up. We also talked very much, in an earlier group, about the need for planning to consider the climate emergency and nature crisis. Local nature recovery networks are very much a growing area that needs to be absolutely joined up.

It is worth saying that this is not a political amendment; it is an attempt to make things work, to make this Bill hang together and to make sure that it works for local communities. I join others in very much hoping that we will get a positive message from the Minister.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, remember the days of the regional spatial strategies, and long debates in EELGA over housing numbers particularly. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I did not celebrate when they got the kibosh, because I thought that there was a lot of good in them—particularly in meeting the housing needs in the east of England but also on the economic development side, which was as important. A great deal of very good work was done in pulling together data and information for the whole region, in order to look at where and how best to develop particular clusters and where they would work well. So there was a lot of merit in that very strategic-level thinking.

It has moved on a bit since the days of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in Hertfordshire, with the Hertfordshire Growth Board looking at issues outside the remit of the straightforward local planning authority. For example, there is the mass rapid transit system that south and south-west Hertfordshire was looking at, which covers a number of different local authorities. Then, there is working with the local enterprise partnerships, as we did on the Hertfordshire Growth Board. There was a clear drive towards the consideration of travel-to-work areas, which was why I spoke so strongly in favour when we discussed this issue before.

I am convinced that we need to work jointly, with joint authorities, involving them in particular in the early stages, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. It is no good waiting until a draft strategy has been produced and, if there is a major game-changer in there, expecting local authorities to pick it apart and change it. It is much better for them to be engaged and involved from the very start.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned government Amendment 201B, which we will debate on Wednesday, which will allow combined authorities to take on planning powers. I am not going to start the whole discussion now, but we were very concerned about this. We will have a debate about it, but it seems like a very slippery slope indeed. It is far better to include local authorities and all the component parts that make up the combined authority and their neighbours in the discussion from the early days of the joint spatial development strategy.

I absolutely support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on the inclusion of districts and councils in a very real way in the decision-making on JSDSs. I think it emphasises the points we made in earlier debates, in Committee and on Report, about the importance of the full membership of combined authorities—for both tiers in two-tier areas. Those organisations are then involved right from the start, and they have a democratic mandate to be so involved.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made the important point that there are elements that will be included in joint spatial development strategies that do not stop at boundaries, and so it is very important that we work across those boundaries on such things as climate change, healthy homes, sustainable transport and biodiversity. All those things do not come to an end when you get to the end of your local plan area, so we all need to work together on how we tackle those key issues.

We are very supportive of the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I am interested to hear the Minister’s answer as to whether the part of the schedule that covers this would stretch to make sure that this very important early-stage consultation could be included as a requirement within the Bill.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as declared in the register, which are that I am a serving councillor at both district and county level and a vice-president of the District Councils’ Network.

My Amendment 67 would permit local authorities which wished to do so to establish bus companies and would expand the powers that local authorities currently have to franchise bus services, which are currently available only to combined authorities. We have tabled this amendment to highlight the recommendations drawn out of the Select Committee report Public Transport in Towns and Cities and subsequent discussions of that report in your Lordships’ House in April. Fundamental to the recommendations of the report was that a firm link be established between local plans and transport plans. Our amendment would give local authorities the powers that they need to enable that link.

Last week I attended a select committee meeting in my local authority on bus provision. It was a long session in which members were keen to point out the considerable difficulties caused to our constituents by the combination of unreliable, infrequent or non-existent bus services. The Conservative county councillor who holds the cabinet responsibility for transport was open in saying that the privatisation of bus services that happened in the 1980s had not helped local authorities to ensure that there were efficient and effective bus services provided for their areas. I have no doubt that such scrutiny of bus services happens across the UK, because bus users are utterly fed up with the level of service they receive.

Your Lordships’ House recently published a very detailed report on Public Transport in Towns and Cities. During the debate on that report, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, described the Government’s performance, measured against their pledge to bring public transport up to standards in London. The Government had done:

“The brief answer is, not terribly well”.—[Official Report, 17/4/23; col. GC 147.]


He set out some mitigating factors as to why that would be the case, but surely we must all ask ourselves whether in the current circumstances, and with bus services failing passengers in so many places across the country, we can carry on with the vague expectation that eventually—they have already had four decades to do it—the private sector will start to deliver the level of service we know is needed to persuade far more people to leave their cars at home.

As Manchester has been able to go further with this than other local authorities, it was interesting to read Andy Burnham’s evidence to the Select Committee. In advocating franchising, he pointed out that his case was strengthened

“because large subsidies are being paid at the moment to various operators in the deregulated model, which in my view delivers very limited returns for the public”.

He also asked whether public operators would be allowed to take part in the franchising schemes as well. We agree that they should be able to do so.

During the debate on the report, it was pointed out, as it has been many times in this Chamber, that buses provide two-thirds of public transport trips in this country. The evidence shows that passenger numbers grow where services are of sufficient frequency and reliability to mean that passengers can just “turn up and go” without consulting a timetable. This is common practice in London but very unusual outside the capital, where sometimes the very fact a half-hourly bus has turned up at all can be subject to comments on social media. Councillors often take the brunt of these failures when services are late or cancelled at short notice or routes are taken out with no notice or consultation.

I also have to say a word about rural bus services, which are rapidly falling into extinction. Telling people who may have only one bus a day—or in some cases one bus a week—that the aim is to provide London-style bus services will most likely be greeted with derision. Some good work is being done to pilot on-demand bus services for rural areas, but these may prove too expensive for many users. Most rural users like those in towns just want to know that there will be a bus service and that buses will turn up on time.

There is such a simple solution to this, and that is to extend the powers currently granted to combined authorities, which can both establish bus companies and franchise services to meet customers’ needs, to all transport authorities. If we do not hear from the Minister that some movement has been made from the Government, I would like to test the opinion of the House on this. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having attached my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, I will speak briefly while noting my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has overwhelmingly made the case for this, but I want to reflect on a number of things. She referred to the importance of reliability, and I can share her reflections on how rare that is. I was in Gloucester on Friday with Learn with the Lords and I waited for a bus—and it turned up at the time it was supposed to. I was quite shocked. It is such a rare occurrence, particularly when you are in a town that you do not know and you hope to rely on the timetable but you have no idea whether it is going to work. We cannot continue to have that situation.

Of course, that is an issue for visitors and for tourism but, overwhelmingly, it is an issue for local people. It is about reliability. I know of many people who have not been able to take jobs. We are greatly concerned at the moment about the shortage of labour supply in some areas, but you cannot take a job if you are not sure whether there is a bus or that the bus is not going to turn up reliably. You tell your employer, day after day, “Well yes, I was at the bus stop at the right time, but the bus did not turn up”. That is simply not a sustainable position.

On the idea of having local control, buses are a public service. They are essential to the operation of our communities. They should be controlled and run by local hands for the public good, not for private profit. There is no doubt. I do not believe that anyone can get up and say that the situation we have now, with buses being run for private profit, has been anything but a disaster. It is time to give back and—dare I borrow a phrase?—allow local communities to take back control of their bus services.

I can certainly assure the House that the Greens are firmly behind this amendment. I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, to push it through if we do not get a strong response from the Minister because I think that, were we to hold a referendum—dare I use that word?—across the country, we would get an overwhelming win for this amendment to the levelling up Bill.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to state our strong support on these Benches for this amendment; indeed, had I been confident in advance that I was going to be able to be here to speak this afternoon, I would have added my name to it.

In 2017, I put down a similar amendment to what was then the Bus Services Bill. The similar issue was one that we raised from these Benches in Committee. This levelling up Bill gives us an opportunity to halt and reverse the decline in bus services outside London, which has been evidenced since the so-called deregulation of bus services in the 1980s. I will not repeat the points made by noble Baronesses, but it is clear to us all that urgent and radical action is needed to stem the crisis.

The problem in 2017 with the Bus Services Act was that the Government could not bring themselves to concede that deregulation had played a key role in the decline of bus services. The Act allowed franchising and other forms of additional control for local authorities but only for larger authorities; it did not trust smaller authorities to do this. With support, there is no reason why they should not be able to do this. Further, the Act did not allow local authorities to set up their own bus companies, which is totally contrary to the evidence. Some of the very best bus companies in Britain are those heritage bus companies that are still owned and run by local authorities.

Let me give one example of the sort of thing that might happen if local authorities had this power. If a local authority of modest size finds that its local commercial company is going to cut the vital bus services that enable links between the town centre and the local further education college, it might set up its own bus company specifically to enable young people going to that college, as well as shoppers going into the next town, to use those services—it does not always have to be on an enormous scale. Who understands better than the local council what will work in local neighbourhoods? The local council is the organisation that understands local traffic patterns, the best routes, where to find most people with no access to a car and so on. If we truly want to level up, we have to improve bus services, which are disproportionately used by the oldest, the youngest and the poorest in our society, in order to enable them to access work, education, health and other vital social services. I support the amendment.

Small and Medium-sized Housebuilders

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said in answer to a previous question, we need both. We need everybody, including small builders, local authorities and larger builders, to make sure that we build the houses that this country urgently needs. I am aware that the SME sector is currently struggling with challenges, particularly with the macroeconomic climate. We will continue to prioritise supporting the industry and local areas and delivering the safe, high-quality homes that this country needs.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the House often discusses problems of labour and skills shortages. Yesterday the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Apprenticeships, of which I declare that I am an officer, put out a report, one focus of which was the difficulties that small and medium enterprises, including builders, are encountering in being able to take on apprenticeships and see them through. What are the Government doing to deal with that pressing issue?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pressing issue. The interesting thing is that we recognise that the SMEs play a crucial role in promoting skills in the construction industry and are responsible for many of the training programmes, particularly for new entrants into the sector. We are supporting construction skills through the Construction Industry Training Board, which last year spent nearly £150 million on training grants and apprenticeships across the sector. It is important that we continue to support them, because we need these skills in the sector and we need to grow it.